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CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1908 



■■ ,, , iZ\Sf 

LIBRARY of congress] ^'^ /^ 
Two CoDies Received \ \ \ 1 



NOV 28 1908 

CLASS C^ XXc Mo 



Copyright, 1908, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published November, 1908 






1 



IN LOVING MEMORY OF 

MY FATHER 

GEORGE H. FOSSARD, M.D. 



" Those who are gone you have. Those who departed loving- 
you, love you still ; and you love them always." 

—Rotmdabout Papers ( " On Letts's Diary "). 

" If love lives through all life; and survives through all sor- 
row ; and remains steadfast with us through all changes : and 
in all darkness of spirit burns brightly ; and, if we die, de- 
plores us forever, and loves still equally; and exists with the 
very last gasp and Ihrob of the faithful bosom whence it 
passes with the pure soul, beyond death ; surely it shall be 
immortal ! Though we who remain are separated from it, is 
it not ours in Heaven ? If we love still those we lose, can 
we altogether lose those we love V'—The Newcotnes. 



INTRODUCTION 

If authors sneer, it is the critic's business 
to sneer at them for sneering. He must 
pretend to be their superior, or who would 
care about his opinion? And his liveHhood 
is to find fault. Besides, he is right some- 
times; and the stories he reads, and the 
characters drawn in them, are old, sure 
enough. What stories are new? All types 
of all characters march through all fables: 
tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies; 
dupes and knaves, long-eared Neddies, giv- 
ing themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing 
virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials; 
their blindness, their folly and constancy. 
With the very first page of the human story 
do not love and lies, too, begin ? So the tales 
were told ages before ^sop and asses under 
lion's manes roared in Hebrew; and sly 
foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in 
sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in San- 
scrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as 
he did when he first began shining; and the 



viii INTRODUCTION 

birds in the tree overhead, while I am 
writing, sing very much the same note they 
have sung ever since they were finches. . . . 
There may be nothing new under and in- 
cluding the sun; but it looks fresh every 
morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, 
scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until 
the night comes and quiet. And then will 
wake Morrow, and the eyes that look on it; 
and so da capo. — The Newcomes, chap. i. 



SELECTED PASSAGES 



ADVERSITY 

AND had that further education which 
neither books nor years will give, but 
which some men get from the silent teachings 
of adversity. She is a great school-mistress, as 
many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his 
hand out to her ferrule, and whimpered over 
his lesson before her awful chair. — Esmond, 
chap, iv, bk. ii. 

IMPECUNIOSITY will do you good. . . . 
I don't know anything more wholesome 
for a man, for an honest man, mind you — for 
another, the medicine loses its effect. . . . 
It is a . . . tonic, it keeps your moral man 
in a perpetual state of excitement; as a man 
who is riding at a fence, or has his opponent's 
single stick before him, is forced to look his 
obstacle steadily in the face, and brace him- 
self to repulse or overcome it, a little necessity 
brings out your pluck, if you have any, and 
nerves you to grapple with fortune. — Pen- 
demiis, chap. xxxi. 

I 



ADVICE 



ADVICE 



WARNING he had; but I doubt others 
had warning before his time and 
since, and he benefited by it as most men 
do. — Esmond, chap, viii, bk. ii. 

BUT who in love (or in any other point, 
for the matter of that), hstens to advice? 
— Barry Lyndon, chap. ii. 

AND who does not know how useless ad- 
vice is ? A man gets his own experience 
and will take nobody's hearsay. — Esmond, 
chap, ii, bk. iii. 

MARRY, gentlemen, if you like, leave 
your comfortable dinner at the club 
for cold mutton and curl-papers at your 
home; give up your books or pleasures, and 
take to yourselves wives and children; but 
think well on what you do first, as I have no 
doubt you will, after this advice. . . . Advice 
is always useful in matters of love. Men 
always take it, they always follow other 
people's opinions, not their own. They 
always profit by example. — Men's Wives 
(Dennis Haggerty's Wife). 

YOU may, too, meet with your master. 
Don't be too eager, or too confident, or 
too worldly. — Pendennis, chap. xliv. 



AMBITION 3 

OVE is always controlled by other peo- 
' pie's advice, always. — Philip, chap. xxx. 



SUPPOSE in the game of life— and it is 
but a twopenny game, after all — you are 
equally eager of winning. Shall you be 
ashamed of your ambition or glory in it ? — 
Roundabout Papers ('Autour De Mon 
Chapeau'). 

THERE'S some particular prize we all of 
us value, and that every man of spirit 
will venture his life for. With this, it may be 
to achieve a great reputation for learning; 
with that, to be a man of fashion, and the 
admiration of the town; with another, to 
consummate a great work of art or poetry, 
and go to immortality that way; and with 
another, for a certain time of his life, the sole 
object and aim is a woman. — Esmond, chap, 
ii, bk. iii. 

IF it be no sin in a man to covet honour, 
why should a woman, too, not desire it? 
— Esmond, chap, iv, bk. iii. 

IS he the only man that has set his life 
against a stake which may not be worth 
the winning? — Esmond, chap, i, bk. iii. 



4 AMBITION 

IN the battle of life are we all going to try 
for the honours of championship ? If we 
can do our duty, if we can keep our place 
pretty honourably through the combat, let 
us say, Laus Deo! at the end of it, as the 
firing ceases and the night falls over the 
field. — Roundabout Papers ('De Juventute'). 

INSPIRED by what is called a noble emu- 
lation, some people grasp at honours and 
win them, others, too weak or mean, blindly 
admire and grovel before those who have 
gained them, others not being able to acquire 
them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy. 
There are only a few bland and not-in-the- 
least conceited philosophers . . . who can 
behold . . . and mark the phenomenon 
calmly. — Book of Snobs, chap. iii. 

ALTHOUGH he acknowledged himself 
to be . . . with no ambition, . . . 
I think the man had some good in him, es- 
pecially in the resolution with which he bore 
his calamities. Many a gallant man of the 
highest honour is often not proof against 
these. . . . My maxim is to bear all; to put 
up with water if you cannot get burgundy, 
and if you have no velvet, to be content 
with frieze. But burgundy and velvet are 
the best, bien entendu, and the man is a fool 
who will not seize the best when the scramble 
is open. — Barry Lyndon, chap. vi. 



ASSOCIATES 5 

NO more has Betty the housemaid, and 
I have no word of blame against them. 
But a high-souled man doesn't make friends 
of these. A gentleman doesn't choose these 
for his companions, or bitterly rues it after- 
ward, if he do. Are you who are setting up 
to be a man of the world, ... to tell me 
that the aim of life is to guttle three courses 
and dine off silver ? Do you dare to own to 
yourself that your ambition in life is good 
claret, and that you'll dine with any pro- 
vided you get a stalled ox to feed on ? . . •. 
I'd rather live upon raw turnips and sleep 
in a hollow tree, . . . than degrade myself 
to this civilisation, and own that a French 
cook was the thing in life best worth living 
for. — Pendennis, chap. Ixi. 

ASSOCIATES 

THAT is the rationale of living in good 
company. An absurd conceited, high 
and mighty young man hangs back, . . . 
an honest, simple, quiet, easy, clear-sighted 
Fogy steps in and takes the goods which 
the gods provide without elation as without 
squeamishness. — Sketches in London ('On 
the Pleasures of Being a Fogy'). 

HOW can we be the first, unless we select 
our inferiors for our associates ? — The 
Newcomes, chap. ix. 



6 ASSOCIATES 

FOR a poor man, there is nothing Hke 
having good acquaintances. — Penden- 
nis, chap, xxxvi. 

WHICH do you Hke best, to be a giant 
amongst the pigmies, or a pigmy 
amongst the giants? . . . What I would 
hint is, that we possibly give ourselves patro- 
nising airs before small people, as folks higher 
placed than ourselves give themselves airs 
before us. — Philip, chap. xl. 

DEPEND upon it, . . . there is noth- 
ing more wholesome for you than to 
acknowledge and associate with your su- 
periors. — The Virginians, chap, xxiii. 



o 



F a truth it is good to be with good 
people. — The Virginians, chap, xxiii. 



I WOULD certainly wish that you should 
associate with your superiors rather than 
your inferiors. There is no more dangerous 
or stupefying position for a man in life than 
to be a cock of small society. It prevents 
his ideas from growing: it renders him in- 
tolerably conceited. A twopenny halfpenny 
Caesar, a Brummagen dandy, a coterie phil- 
osopher, or vnt, is pretty sure to be an ass, 
and, in fine, I set it down as a maxim that it 
is good for a man to live where he can meet 
his betters, intellectual and social. — Sketches 
and Travels in London ( ' On Friendship' ). 



BEAUTY 7 

THE great comfort of the society of great 
folks is, that they do not trouble them- 
selves about your twopenny little person, as 
smaller persons do, but take you for what 
you are — a man kindly and good-natured, 
or witty and sarcastic, or learned and elo- 
quent, or a good raconteur, or a very hand- 
some man, . , . or an excellent gour- 
mand, and judge of wines — or what not. 
Nobody sets you so quickly at your ease as 
a fine gentleman. — Sketches and Travels in 
London ('A Word about Dinners'). 

AS is the race of man, so is the race of 
flounders. If you can but see the 
latter in his right element, you may view him 
agile, healthy and comely; put him out of his 
place, and behold his beauty is gone. — The 
Virginians, chap. Ixvi. 

BEAUTY 

WHAT is there in a pair of pink cheeks 
and blue eyes, forsooth? these dear 
Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts 
of genius . . . and so forth, are far more 
valuable endowments for a female, than those 
fugitive charms which a few years will inevi- 
tably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear 
women speculate upon the worthlessness and 
the duration of beauty. But though virtue 
is a much finer thing and those hapless creat- 
ures who suffer under the misfortune of good 



8 BEAUTY 

looks ought to be continually put in mind 
of the fate which awaits them: and though 
very likely the heroic female character which 
ladies admire is a more glorious and beauti- 
ful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, art- 
less, tender, little domestic goddess, whom 
men are inclined to worship, yet the latter 
and inferior sort of women must have this 
consolation — that the men do admire them, 
after all. Indeed, for my own part, though I 
have been repeatedly told by persons for 
whom I have the greatest respect, that . . . 
Mrs. Black has not a word to say for her- 
self; yet I know that I have had the most 
delightful . . . conversations with Mrs. 
Black, . . . and so I am tempted to think 
that to be despised by her sex is a very 
great compliment to a woman. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. xii. 

TO be beautiful is enough. If a woman 
can do that well, who shall demand 
more from her? You don't want a rose to 
sing. — The Newcomes, chap. xxv. 

EVERY woman would rather be beautiful 
than be anything else in the world. — The 
Virginians, chap. Ixxxiii, 

DID you ever know a woman pardon an- 
other for being handsome and more 
love-worthy than herself? — Rebecca and 
Rowena ('The Overture'). 



BEAUTY 9 

DO ladies love others for having pretty 
faces ? — The Book of Snobs, chap, xxxii. 

1 DON'T care for beauty which will only 
bear to be looked at from a distance, like 
a scene in a theatre. What is the most beau- 
tiful nose in the world, if it be covered with a 
skin of the texture and colour of coarse 
whitey-brown paper; and if Nature has 
made it as slippery and shining as though it 
had been anointed with pomatum? . . . 
Would you wear a flower that had been 
dipped in a grease-pot ? No, give me a fresh, 
dewy, healthy rose of Somersetshire, not one 
of those . . . unwholesome exotics. — Corn- 
hill to Cairo, chap. v. 

THE elder of Esmond's two kinswomen 
pardoned the younger her beauty when 
that had lost somewhat of its freshness, per- 
haps, and forgot most her grievances against 
the other, when the subject of them was no 
longer prosperous and enviable. — Esmond, 
chap. V, bk. ii. 

WITH the other sex perfectly tolerant 
and kindly, of her own she was in\a- 
riably jealous, and a proof that she had this 
vice is, that though she would acknowledge 
a thousand faults that she had not, to this 
which she had she could never be got to own. 



lo BEAUTY 

But if there came a woman with even a sem- 
blance of beauty to Castlewood she was so 
sure to find out some wrong in her, that my 
Lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often 
joke with her concerning her foible. . . . 
As soon as ever she had to do with a pretty 
woman, she was cold, retiring and haughty. — 
Esmond, chap, vii, bk. i. 

ALMOST all handsome women are good: 
they cannot choose but be good and 
gentle with those sweet features. ... A 
day in which one sees a very pretty woman 
should always be noted, . . . and marked 
with a white stone. — Sketches and Travels 
in London ('On the Pleasure of Being a 
Fogy'). 

IT is the pretty face which creates sympathy 
in the hearts of men, those wicked rogues. 
. . . We give no heed to ... a plain face. 
. . . And, so with their usual sense of justice, 
ladies argue that because a woman is hand- 
some, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! 
there are some of you who are neither hand- 
some nor wise. — Vanity Fair, chap, xxxviii. 

I WOULD no more have you refuse to 
. . . admire a pretty girl than dislike the 
smell of a rose, or turn away your eyes from 
a landscape. — Sketches and Travels in London 
('On Tailoring and Toilettes in General'). 



BOOKS AND AUTHORS ii 

COULD people see Cinderella's beauty 
when she was in rags by the fire, or until 
she stepped out of her fairy coach in her dia- 
monds? How are you to recognize a dia- 
mond in a dust hole ? Only very clever eyes 
can do that. Whereas a lady in a fairy coach 
and eight naturally creates a sensation. — 
Philips chap. iv. 

YOU read the past in some old faces, while 
some others lapse into mere meekness 
and content. The fires go quite out of some 
eyes as the crow's feet pucker round them; 
they flash no longer with scorn, or with anger, 
or love; they gaze and no one is melted by 
their sapphire glances, they look and no one 
is dazzled. — The Virginians, chap, xxvii. 

THE charms ... of these latter, . . . 
this very physical superiority which Eng- 
lish ladies possess, this tempting brilliancy of 
health and complexion, which belongs to them 
more than to any others. . . . The French 
call such beauty 'La heaute du diable.' — 
Character Sketches ('The Artists'). 

BOOKS AND AUTHORS 

A PERILOUS trade, indeed, is that of a 
man who has to bring his tears and 
laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs 
and joys, his private thoughts and feelings to 



12 BOOKS AND AUTHORS 

market, to write them on paper, and sell 
them for money. — English Humourists 
('Sterne and Goldsmith'). 

COULD we know the man's feeling as well 
as the author's thoughts — how interest- 
ing most books would be! more interesting 
than merry. I suppose Harlequin's face be- 
hind his mask is always grave, if not melan- 
choly — certainly each man who lives by the 
pen and happens to read this, must remem- 
ber, if he will, his own experiences and re- 
call many solemn hours of solitude and la- 
bour. What a constant care sat at the side 
of the desk and accompanied him! Fever 
or sickness were lying possibly in the next 
room; ... or grief might be bearing him 
down, and the cruel mist before the eyes 
rendering the paper scarce visible as he 
wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove 
on the pen. What man among us has not 
had nights and hours like these ? But to the 
manly heart — severe as these pangs are, they 
are endurable: long as the night seems, the 
dawn comes at last, and the wounds heal, 
and the fever abates, and rest comes, and 
you can afford to look back on the past 
misery with feelings that are anything but 
bitter. — Pendennis, chap. Ixxi. 



BOOKS AND AUTHORS 13 

T\ORMEZ hien. I should like to write a 
-LJ nightcap book — a book that you can 
muse over, that you can smile over, that you 
can yawn over — a book of which you can 
say, 'Well, this man is so and so, and so and 
so; but he has a friendly heart (although 
some wiseacres have painted him as black as 
Bogey) and you may trust what he says,' 
I should like to touch you sometimes with a 
reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy 
and make you say, lo anche, have so thought, 
felt, smiled, suffered. ... A dip into the 
volume at random and so on for a page or 
two, and now and then a smile, and pres- 
ently a gape, and the book drops out of your 
hand; and so hon soir, and pleasant dreams 
to you. — Roundabout Papers ('On Two 
Children in Black'). 

NOVELS are sweets. All people with 
healthy, literary appetites love them — 
almost all women — a vast number of clever 
hard-headed men. Why, one of the most 
learned physicians in England said to me only 
yesterday, 'I have just read so and so for the 
second time.' Judges, bishops, chancellors, 
mathematicians, are notorious novel readers 
as well as young boys and sweet girls. — 
Roundabout Papers ('On a Lazy, Idle Boy'). 



14 CHARITY 



CHARITY 



IS not our want the occasion of our broth- 
er 's charity, and thus does not good come 
out of that evil? When the traveller (of 
whom the Master spoke) fell among the 
thieves, his mishap was contrived to try many 
a heart beside his own — the Knave's who 
robbed him, the Levite's and Priest's who 
passed him as he lay bleeding, the humble 
Samaritan's, whose hand poured oil into his 
wound, and held out its pittance to relieve 
him? — Philip, chap. ii. 

THEN they left off coming to see him 
altogether; for such is the way of the 
world, where many of us have good impulses, 
and are generous on occasion, but are wearied 
by perpetual want and begin to grow angry 
at its importunities — being very properly 
vexed at the daily recurrence of hunger, and 
the impudent unreasonableness of starvation. 
— A Shabby Genteel Story, chap. i. 

THE Samaritan who rescues you, most 
likely, has been robbed and has bled in 
his day, and it is a wounded arm that band- 
ages yours when bleeding. — Philip, chap. xxv. 

YOUR good Samaritan takes out only two- 
pence maybe for the wayfarer whom he 
has rescued, but the little timely supply saves 
a life. — Philip, chap, xxxiv. 



CHEERFULNESS 15 

YOU would out of your earnings, small or 
great, be able to help a poor brother in 
need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but 
twopence to give him succour. Is the money 
which the noble Macaulay gave to the poor 
lost to his family ? God forbid. To the lov- 
ing hearts of his kindred is it not rather the 
most precious part of their inheritance? It 
was invested in love and righteous doing, 
and it bears interest in heaven. You will, 
if letters be your vocation, find saving 
harder than giving and spending. To save 
be your endeavour, too, against the night's 
coming, when no man can work; when the 
arm is weary with the long day's labour, 
. . . when the old who can labour no more 
want warmth and rest, and the young ones 
call for supper" — Roundabout Papers (' On a 
Joke I Once Heard'). 

CHEERFULNESS 

WHAT, indeed, does not that word 
'cheerfulness' imply? It means a 
contented spirit; it means a pure heart, it 
means a kind and loving disposition; it 
means humility and charity; it means a 
generous appreciation of others and a mod- 
est opinion of self. — Sketches and Travels 
in London ('On Love, Marriage, Men and 
Women'). 



i6 CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 

DID you ever know a person who met 
Fortune in that way, whom the goddess 
did not regard kindly? Are not even bad 
people won by a constant cheerfulness and a 
pure and affectionate heart? When the, 
babes in the wood, in the ballad, looked up 
fondly and trustfully at those notorious 
rogues whom their uncle had set to make 
away with the little folks, we all know how 
one of the rascals relented, and made away 
with the other, not having the heart to be 
cruel to so much innocence and beauty. Oh, 
happy they who have that virgin loving trust 
and sweet smiling confidence in the world, 
and fear no evil because they think none. — 
Pendennis, chap. Ixvi. 

CHEERFULNESS is the companion of 
industry. Prosperity their offspring. — 
English Humourists. 

CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 

IT is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one 
sometimes does when the time is past, of 
some little, little, wheel which works the 
whole mighty machinery of Fate, and see 
how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or 
advance, or on the turning of a street, or on 
somebody else's turning of a street, or on some- 
body else's doing of something else. — Cath- 
erine, chap. vii. 



CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 17 

O MIGHTY Fate, that over us miserable 
mortals rulest supreme, with what 
small means are thy ends effected ! with what 
scornful ease and mean instruments does it 
please thee to govern mankind! Let each 
man think of the circumstances of his life, 
and how its lot has been determined. The 
getting up a little earlier or later, the turning 
down this street or that, the eating of this 
dish or the other, may influence all the years 
and actions of a future life. Mankind walks 
down the left-hand side of Regent Street 
instead of the right, and just by that walk 
down Regent Street is ruined for life. Or he 
walks down the right-hand side of Regent 
Street instead of the left, and you have an 
account at your banker's ever after. What 
is the cause of all this good fortune ? A walk 
on a particular side of Regent Street. — A 
Shabby Genteel Story, chap. v. 

WHO has not felt how he works — the 
dreadful, conquering Spirit of 111? 
Who cannot see, in the circle of his own so- 
ciety, the fated and foredoomed to woe and 
evil? Some call the doctrine of destiny a 
dark creed; but for me, I would fain try 
and think it a consolatory one. It is better 
with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem 
one's self in the hands of Fate than to think 
— with our resolves so loud, so vain, so ludi- 
crously, despicably weak and frail; with our 



i8 CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 

dim wavering, wretched conceits about virt- 
ue, and our irresistible propensity to wrong, 
— that we are the worJcers of our future sor- 
row or happiness. If we depend on our 
strength, what is it against mighty circum- 
stance ? If we look to ourselves, what hope 
have we ? Look back at the whole of your 
life and see how fate has mastered you and 
it. Think of your disappointments and 
your successes. Has your striving influ- 
enced one or the other? A fit of indigestion 
puts itself between you and honours and 
reputation, an apple plops on your nose and 
makes you a world's wonder and glory; a fit 
of poverty makes a rascal of you, who were, 
and are still, an honest man; clubs trumps, 
or six lucky mains at dice, make an honest 
man for life of you, who ever were, will be 
and are, a rascal. Who sends the illness? 
who causes the apple to fall? who deprives 
you of your worldly goods? or who shuflSes 
the cards, and brings trumps, honour, and 
virtue, and prosperity back again ? You call 
it chance; ay, and so it is chance that 
when the floor gives way and the rope 
stretches tight, the poor v^etch before St. 
Sepulchre's clock dies. Only with us, clear- 
sighted mortals as we are, we can't see the 
rope by which we hang, and know not when 
or how the drop may fall. — Catherine, 
chap. vii. 



CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 19 

THERE is scarce any thoughtful man or 
woman, I suppose, but can look back 
upon his course of past life, and remember 
some point, trifling as it may have seemed at 
the time of occurrence, which has neverthe- 
less turned and altered his whole career. — 
Esmond, chap, xii, bk. i. 

DO we know ourselves, . . . what good 
or vile circumstances may bring from 
us ? — The Newcomes, chap. Ixiv. 

W''HO can foresee everything and al- 
ways? Not the wisest among us. 
We may know the world ever so well, lay the 
best-ordered plans and the profoundest com- 
binations, and, by a certain not unnatural 
turn of fate, we and our plans and combina- 
tions, are sent flying before the wind. . . . 
And, after years of patient scheming, and 
prodigies of skill, after coaxing, wheedling, 
doubling, bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger 
powers interpose — and schemes, and skill and 
violence, are nought. — The Newcomes, chap, 
xxxiii. 

I SEE men who begin with ideas of univer- 
sal reform, propound their loud plans for 
the regeneration of mankind, give up their 
schemes after a few years of bootless talking 
and vainglorious attempts to lead their fel- 
lows; and sink quietly into the rank and file. 



20 CIRCUMSTANCES AND FATE 

. . . They submit to circumstances which 
are stronger than they, . . . march as the 
world marches toward reform, but at the 
world's pace, . . . compelled finally to sub- 
mit, and to wait, and to compromise. — Pen- 
dennis, chap. Ixi. 

''TpIS with almost all of us as in M. Mas- 
■JL sillon's magnificent image regarding 
King William, a grain de sable that perverts 
or perhaps overthrows us. — Esmond, chap, 
xii, bk. i. 

WHEN Fate wills that something should 
come to pass, she sends forth a million 
of little circumstances to clear and prepare 
the way. — A Shabby Genteel Story, chap. v. 

THRICE fortunate he to whom circum- 
stance is made easy, whom fate visits 
with gentle trial, and kindly heaven keeps 
out of temptation. — The Newcomes, chap. 
Ixiv. 



WHO can tell another's shortcomings, 
lost opportunities, the defects which 
incapacitate reason? What invisible and 
forgotten accident, terror of youth, chance or 
mischance of fortune, may have altered the 
current of life ? A grain of sand may alter it 
as the flinging of a pebble may end it. Who 



COQUETRY 21 

can weigh circumstances, temptations that 
go to our good and evil account, save One, 
before whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at 
whose mercy we ask absolution. But who 
has not been tried or fallen, and who has 
escaped without scars from that struggle? — 
Pendennis, chap. Ixxiii. 

FATE is stronger than all of us. — Esmond, 
chap, i, bk. ii. 

COQUETRY 

As we know very well that a lady who 
is skilled in dancing or singing never can 
perfect herself without a deal of study in 
private, and that the song or minuet which 
is performed with so much graceful ease in 
the assembly-room has not been acquired 
without vast labour and perseverance in 
private: so it is with the dear creatures 
who are skilled in coquetting. — Barry Lyn- 
don, chap. i. 

IN the presence of Death, that sovereign 
ruler, a woman's coquetry is scared, and 
her jealousy will hardly pass the boundaries 
of that grim kingdom. 'Tis entirely of the 
earth, that passion, and expires in the cold, 
blue air, beyond our sphere. — Esmond, 
chap, ix, bk. i. 



22 COQUETRY 

LET her have a dozen admirers, and the 
dear coquette will exercise her power 
upon them all: and, as a lady when she has 
a large wardrobe, and a taste for variety in 
dress, will appear every day in a different cos- 
tume, so will the young and giddy beauty 
wear her lovers; encouraging now the black 
whiskers, now smiling on the brown, now 
thinking that the gay smiling rattle of an 
admirer becomes her very well, and now 
adopting the sad sentimental melancholy 
one, according as her changeful fancy 
prompts her. — Men's Wives ('The Ravens- 
wing,* chap. i.). 

WHEN the writer's descendants come 
to read this memoir, will they ever 
have knelt to a woman who has listened to 
them, and played with them, and laughed 
with them, — who, beckoning them with 
lures and caresses, and with Yes smiling 
from her eyes, has tricked them onto their 
knees, and turned her back and left them ? — 
Esmond, chap, xv, bk. ii. 

WOMEN coquette with their eyes be- 
fore their tongue can form a word — 
Roundabout Papers (' The Notch on the Axe '). 

DO you suppose I am going to make 
tragedy of such an old used-up bat- 
tered, trivial, every-day subject as a jilt who 
plays with a man's passion, and laughs at 



COQUETRY 23 

him and leaves him ? Tragedy, indeed! Oh, 
yes! poison — black-edged note-paper — Wa- 
terloo Bridge — and so forth! No, if she 
goes, let her go ! — Lovel the Widower, chap. ii. 

THE ladies — heaven bless them! — are, 
as a rule, coquettes from babyhood up- 
ward. Little shes of three years old play 
little airs and graces upon small heroes of five; 
simpering misses of nine make attacks upon 
young gentlemen of twelve; and at sixteen 
a well-grown girl, under encouraging circum- 
stances, — say she is pretty, in a family of ugly 
elder sisters, or an only child and heiress is 
at the very pink and prime of her coquetry: 
they will jilt you at that age with an ease and 
arch infantine simplicity that never can be sur- 
passed in maturer years. — Catherine, chap. i. 

MISS HOPKINS, you have been a co- 
quette since you were a year old; you 
worked on your papa's friends in the nurse's 
arms by the fascination of your lace frock 
and pretty new sash and shoes; when you 
could just toddle you practised your arts 
upon other children. — The Newcomes, chap, 
xlvi. 

THAT a young beauty should torture a 
man with alternate liking and indififer- 
ence, allure, dismiss and call him back out of 
banishment, practise arts to please upon 



24 COQUETRY 

him, and ignore them when rebuked for her 
coquetry — these are surely occurrences so 
common in young woman's history as to call 
for no special censure. — The Newcomes, 
chap. liii. 

A SIMPLETON of twenty is better than 
a roue of twenty. It is better not to 
have thought at all, than to have thought 
such things as must go through a girl's mind 
whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted, 
whose eyes as soon as they are opened, are 
turned to the main chance, and are taught 
to leer at an earl, to languish at a marquis, 
and to grow blind before a commoner. — The 
Newcomes, chap. Ixv. 

PERHAPS neither party was in earnest. 
You were only playing at being in love, 
and the sportive little Undine was humouring 
you at the same play. Nevertheless, if a man 
is balked at this game, he not unfrequently 
loses his temper. — Pendennis, chap. xxv. 

HOW often are our little vanities shocked 
in this way. Have you not fancied 
that Lucinda's eyes beamed on you with a 
special tenderness, and presently become 
aware that she ogles your neighbour with the 
very same killing glances? Have you not 
exchanged exquisite whispers with Lalage at 
the dinner-table, and then overheard her 



DAYBREAK 25 

whispering the very same delicious phrases 
to old Surdus in the drawing-room? The 
sun shines for everybody, the flowers smell 
sweet for all noses, and the nightingale and 
Lalage warble for all ears — not your long 
ones only, good brother. — Tlie Virginians, 
chap. Ixix. 

DAYBREAK 

LOOK and see the sun rise ; he sees the 
labourer on his way afield, the work-girl 
plying her poor needle, the lawyer at his desk, 
perhaps, the beauty smiling asleep upon her 
pillow of down, . . . the fevered patient 
tossing on it, or the doctor watching by it. — 
Pendennis, chap. xliv. 

WHICH of us has not his anxiety in- 
stantly present when his eyes are 
opened ... to the world after his night's 
sleep? Kind strengthener that enables us 
to face the day's task with renewed heart! 
Beautiful ordinance of Providence that 
creates rest as it awards labour! — Pendennis, 
chap, xlvii. 

ALL over this world what an endless 
chorus is singing of love and thanks 
and prayer. Day tells to day the wondrous 
story, and night recounts it unto night. 
How do I come to think of a sunrise which 
I saw on the Nile when the river and sky 



26 DAYBREAK 

flushed and glowed with the dawning Hght, 
and as the luminary appeared, the boatman 
knelt on the rosy deck and adored Allah? 
So, as thy sun rises, friend, over the humble 
house-tops round about your home, shall 
you wake many and many a day to duty and 
labour. May the task have been honestly done 
when the night comes, and the steward deal 
kindly with the labourer. — Philip, chap. xxxv. 

AND there is nothing particularly new 
under the sun. It will shine to-mor- 
row upon pretty much the same flowers, sports, 
pastimes, etc., which it illuminated yester- 
day. — Philip, chap. xv. 

AS I look, the sky-line toward the east 
grows redder and redder. . . . Every 
minute the dawn twinkles up into the twi- 
light, and . . . the heaven blushes brighter. 
. . . And lo! in a flash of crimson splendour, 
with blazing scarlet clouds running before his 
chariot and heralding his majestic approach, 
God's sun rises upon the world, and all na- 
ture wakens and brightens. 

O glorious spectacle of light and life! O 
beatific symbol of Power, Love, Joy, Beauty! 
Let us look at thee with humble wonder and 
thankfully acknowledge and adore. What 
gracious forethought is it — what generous 
and loving provision, that deigns to prepare 
for our eyes and to soothe our hearts with 



DAYBREAK 27 

such a splendid morning festival. For these 
magnificent bounties of heaven to us let us 
be thankful, even that we can feel thankful 
— (for thanks surely is the noblest effort, as 
it is the greatest delight of the gentle soul) 
and so a grace for this feast, let all say who 
partake of it. — The Kicklehurys on the Rhine. 

IN the sky in the east was a long streak of 
greenish light, which widened and rose 
until it grew to be of an opal colour, then 
orange, then, behold, the round red disc of the 
sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All 
the water blushed as he got up, the deck 
was all red; . . . the distances which had 
been gray were now clothed in purple. 
... As the sun rose higher the morning 
blush faded away, the sky was cloudless and 
pale, and the river and the surrounding land- 
scape were dazzlingly clear. — Cornhill to 
Cairo, chap. xv. 

ON the ensuing Christmas morning, I 
chanced to rise betimes and . . . 
opened the windows and looked out on the 
soft landscape, over which mists were still 
lying; whilst the serene sky above, and the 
lawns and leafless woods in the foreground 
near, were still pink with sunrise. The gray 
had not even left the west yet, and I could see 
a star or two twinkling there, to vanish with 
that twilight. — The Newcomes, chap. Ixxvii. 



28 DEATH 



DEATH 



MAY not the man of the world take his 
moment, too, to be grave and thought- 
ful ? Ask in your own hearts and memories, 
brother and sister, if we do not live in the 
dead, and (to speak reverently) prove God 
by love? — Pendennis, chap. Ixi. 

THOSE who have seen death . . . strike 
down persons revered and beloved know 
how unavailing consolation is. — Esmond, 
chap, i, bk. ii. 

AND so they pass away: friends, kin- 
dred, the dearest-loved. As we go on 
the down-hill journey the mile-stones are 
grave-stones and on each more and more 
names are written, unless haply you live be- 
yond man's common age. — Roundabout Pa- 
pers ('On Letts's Diary'). 

YET another parting and tears and re- 
grets are finished. Tenez — I do not 
believe them when they say there is no meet- 
ing for us afterward, there above. To what 
good to have seen you if we are to part here 
and in Heaven, too? — The Newcomes, 
chap. liii. 



DEATH 29 

WHICH, I wonder, brother reader, is the 
better lot: to die prosperous and 
famous, or poor and disappointed? To 
have and to be forced to yield; or to sink out 
of life, having played and lost the game? 
That must be a strange feeling, when a day 
of our life comes and we say, ^To-morrow, 
success or failure won't matter much; and 
the sun will rise, and all the myriads of man- 
kind go to their work or their pleasure as 
usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.' — 
Vanity Fair, chap. Ixi. 

IF you die to-morrow, your dearest friend 
will feel for you a hearty pang of sorrow, 
and go to his business as usual. — The New- 
comes, chap. Ixxv. 

YOUR kind and cheery companion has 
ridden his last ride and emptied his last 
glass beside you. And while fond hearts are 
yearning for him far away, and his own 
mind, if conscious, is turning eagerly toward 
the spot of the world whither affection or in- 
terest calls it — the Great Father summons 
the anxious spirit from earth to himself, and 
ordains that the nearest and dearest shall 
meet here no more. . . . 

Every man goes back to his room and ap- 
plies the lesson to himself. One would not so 
depart without seeing again the dear, dear 
faces. We reckon up those we love: they 



30 DEATH 

are but very few, but I think one loves them 
better than ever now. Should it be your turn 
next ? and why not ? Is it pity or comfort to 
think of that affection which watches and 
survives you ? 

The Maker has linked together the whole 
race of man with this chain of love, I like to 
think that there is no man but has had kindly 
feelings for some other, and he for his neigh- 
bour, until we bind together the whole family 
of Adam. Nor does it end here. It joins 
heaven and earth together. For my friend 
or my child of past days is still my friend or 
my child to me here, or in the home prepared 
for us by the Father of all. If identity sur- 
vives the grave, as our faith tells us, is it not 
a consolation to think that there may be one 
or two souls, among the purified and just, 
whose affection watches us invisible.— Corw^zV/ 
to Cairo, chap. iv. 

DOES after-life seem less solitary, pro- 
vided that our names, when we "go 
down into silence, ' ' are echoing on this side 
of the grave . . . and human voices are still 
talking about us? — Pendennis, chap. Ivii. 

AFTER the child had gone, Thomas New- 
come began to wander more and more. 
He talked louder; he gave the word of com- 
mand, spoke Hindustanee as if to his men. 
Then he spoke words in French rapidly, 



DEATH 31 

seizing a hand that was near him, and cry- 
ing, "Toujours, toujours!" But it was 
Ethel's hand which he took. Ethel and 
Clive and the nurse were in the room with 
him; the nurse came to us, who were sitting 
in the adjoining apartment; Madame de 
Florae was there with my wife and Bayham. 

At the look in the woman's countenance 
Madame de Florae started up. 'He is very 
bad, he wanders a great deal,' the nurse 
whispered. The French lady fell instantly 
on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer. 

Some time afterward Ethel came in with 
a scared face to our pale group. 'He is call- 
ing for you again, dear lady,' she said, going 
up to Madame de Florae, who was still kneel- 
ing; 'and just now he said he wanted Pen- 
dennis to take care of his boy. He will not 
know you.' She hid her tears as she spoke. 

She went into the room where Clive was 
at the bed's foot; the old man within it 
talked on rapidly for a while: then again he 
would sigh and be still: once more I heard 
him say hurriedly, 'Take care of him when 
I'm in India'; and then with a heart-rending 
voice he called out, 'Leonore, Leonore!' 
She was kneeling by his side now. The pa- 
tient's voice sank into faint murmurs; only 
a moan now and then announced that he 
was not asleep. 

At the usual evening hour the chapel bell 
began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands 



32 DEATH 

outside the bed feebly beat time. And just as 
the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile 
shone over his face, and he lifted up his 
head a little, and quickly said, ' Adsum ! ' 
and fell back. It was the word we used at 
school, when names were called; and lo, he, 
whose heart was as that of a little child, had 
answered to his name, and stood in the 
presence of the Master. — Tlie Newcomes, 
chap. Ixxx. 

ONE night, as we sat with her, . . . she 
fell asleep over her cards, . . . and 
we sat awhile as we had often done before, 
waiting in silence till she should arouse from 
her doze. 

When she awoke she looked fixedly at me 
for a while and said: 'Henry, have I been 
long asleep?' I thought at first that it 
was for my brother she mistook me. . . . 
Here she broke out into frightful hysteri- 
cal shrieks and laughter. . . . Ere her fright- 
ened people had come up to her summons, the 
poor thing had passed out of this mood into 
another, but always labouring under the 
same delusion — that I was the Henry of past 
times, who had loved her, . . . and whose 
bones were lying far away by the banks of the 
Potomac. 

Let us draw the curtain round it. . . . As 
the clock ticks without, and strikes the fleet- 
ing hours, as the sun falls upon the Kneller 



DEATH 33 

picture of Beatrix in her beauty with the blush- 
ing cheeks, the smiling lips, and the waving au- 
burn tresses, and the eyes which seem to look 
toward the dim figure moaning in the bed.-^ 
The Virginians, chap. Ixxxiii. 

HELEN whispered. ' Come away, Arthur 
— not here — I want to ask my child to 
forgive me — and — and my God, to forgive 
me; and to bless you, and love you, my son.' 

He led her, tottering, into her room, and 
closed the door, as the three touched specta- 
tors of the reconciliation looked on in pleased 
silence. Ever after, ever after, the tender 
accents of that voice faltering sweetly at his 
ear — the look of the sacred eyes beaming with 
an afifection unutterable — the quiver of the 
fond lips smiling mournfully — were remem- 
bered by the young man. And at his best 
moments, and at his hours of trial and grief, 
and at his times of success or well-doing, the 
mother's face looked down upon him, and 
blessed him with its gaze of pity and purity, 
as he saw it in that night 5\^hen she yet lin- 
gered with him; and when she seemed, ere 
she quite left him, an angel, transfigured and 
glorified with love — for which love, as for 
the greatest of the bounties and wonders of 
God's provision for us, let us kneel and 
thank Our Father. 

The moon had risen by this time; Arthur 
recollected well afterward how it lighted up 



34 DEATH 

his mother's sweet, pale face. Their talk, or 
his rather, for she scarcely could speak, was 
more tender and confidential than it had 
been for years before. As they were talking 
the clock struck nine, and Helen reminded 
him how, when he was a little boy, she used 
to go up to his bedroom, at that hour, and 
hear him say. Our Father. And once more, 
oh, once more, the young man fell down at 
his mother's sacred knees, and sobbed out 
the prayer which the Divine Tenderness 
uttered for us, and which has been echoed 
for twenty ages since by millions of sinful 
and humbled men. And as he spoke the last 
words of the supplication, the mother's head 
fell down on her boy's, and her arms closed 
round him, and together they repeated the 
words 'for ever and ever,' and 'Amen.' 

A little time after, it might have been a 
quarter of an hour, Laura heard Arthur's 
voice calling from within, 'Laura! Laura!' 
She rushed into the room instantly, and 
found the young man still on his knees, and 
holding his mother's hand. . . . The tender 
heart beat no more; it was to have no more 
pangs, no more griefs and trials. Its last 
throb was love; and Helen's last breath was 
benediction. — Pendennis, chap. Ivii. 



DEVOTION 35 



DEVOTION 

THE instinct which led Harry Esmond to 
admire and love the gracious person, 
the fair apparition, whose beauty and kind- 
ness had so moved him when he first beheld 
her, became soon a devoted affection, and 
passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his 
young heart, that as yet, except in the case of 
dear Father Holt, had had very little kind- 
ness foi which to be thankful. O Dea Certe, 
thought he, remembering the lines out of 
the ^neis which Mr. Holt had taught him. 
There seemed, as the boy thought, in every 
look or gesture of this fair creature, an an- 
gelical softness and bright pity — in motion 
or repose she seemed gracious alike; the 
tone of her voice, though she uttered words 
ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that 
amounted almost to anguish. It cannot be 
called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, 
little more than a menial, felt for an exalted 
lady, his mistress, but it was worship. To 
catch her glance, to divine her errand and 
run on it before she had spoken it, to watch, 
follow, adore her, became the business of 
his life. Meanwhile, as is the way often, his 
idol had idols of her own, and never thought 
of or suspected the admiration of her little 
pigmy adorer. — Esmond, chap, vii, bk. i. 



36 DEVOTION 

HE had had the happiest days of his whole 
life George felt — he knew it now they 
were just gone; he went and took up the 
flowers and put his face to them, smelt them 
— perhaps kissed them. As he put them 
down he rubbed his rough hand across his 
eyes with a bitter word and laugh. He would 
have given his whole life and soul to win 
that prize. . . . Did she want fame? He 
would have won it for her: devotion? a great 
heart full of pent up tenderness and manly 
love and gentleness was there for her, if she 
might take it. But it might not be. Fate had 
ruled otherwise. 'Even if I could, she 
would not have me,' George thought. 'What 
has an ugly rough old fellow to make any 
woman like him? I'm getting old, and I've 
made no mark in life. I've neither good looks 
nor youth or money, nor reputation. A man 
must be able to do something besides stare at 
her and offer on his knees his uncouth devo- 
tion, to make a woman like him. What can 
I do ? Lots of young fellows have passed me 
in the race — what they call the prizes of life 
didn't seem to me worth the trouble of the 
struggle. But for her. If she had been mine 
and liked a diamond — ah I shouldn't she 
have worn it! Psha, what a fool I am to 
brag of what I would have done! We are 
the slaves of destiny. Our lots are shaped 
for us, and mine is ordained long ago. Come, 
let us have a pipe, and put the smell of these 



DEVOTION 37 

flowers out of court. Poor little silent 
flowers! You'll be dead to-morrow. What 
business had you to show your red cheeks in 
this dingy place ? ' — Pendennis, chap, liii, 

SHE gave him her hand, her little, fair 
hand; there was only her marriage ring 
on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of 
grief and estrangement was passed. They 
never had been separated. His mistress 
never had been out of his mind all that time. 
No, not once. No, not in the prison; nor in 
the camp; nor on shore before the enemy; 
nor at sea under the stars of a solemn mid- 
night; nor as he watched the glorious rising 
of the dawn; nor even at the table where he 
sat carousing with friends; or at the theatre 
yonder, where he tried to fancy that other 
eyes were brighter than hers. Brighter eyes 
there might be, and faces more beautiful, but 
none so dear — no voice so sweet as that of 
his beloved mistress, who had been sister, 
mother, goddess to him during his youth — 
goddess now no more, for he knew of her 
weakness; and by thought, by suffering, and 
that experience it brings, was older now than 
she, but more fondly cherished as women per- 
haps, than ever she had been adored as divin- 
ity. . . . As he had sometimes felt, gazing 
up from the deck at midnight into the bound- 
less starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of 
devout wonder at that endless brightness 



38 DOUBT 

and beauty — in some such a way now, the 
depth of this pure devotion (which was for 
the first time revealed to him) quite smote 
upon him, and filled his heart with thanks- 
giving. Gracious God, who was he, weak 
and friendless creature, that such a love 
should be poured out upon him? — Esmond, 
chap, vi, bk. i. 

WE take such goodness for the most 
part, as if it were our due, the Marys 
who bring ointment for our feet get but little 
thanks. Some of us never feel this devotion 
at all, or are moved by it to gratitude or 
acknowledgment, others only recall it years 
after, when the days are passed in which 
those sweet kindnesses were spent on us, and 
we offer back our return for the debt by a 
poor, tardy payment of tears. — Esmond, 
chap, ix, bk. i. 

DOUBT 

THE profitable way in life is the middle 
way. Don't quite believe anybody, for 
he may mislead you. neither disbelieve him, 
for that is uncomplimentary to your friend. 
— Philip, chap. vi. 

BUT will come in spite of us. But is re- 
flection. But is the skeptic's familiar, 
with whom he has made a compact; and if 
he forgets it, and indulges in happy day- 



DREAMS— DRESS 39 

dreams, or building of air-castles, or listens 
to sweet music, let us say, ... But taps 
at the door and says, 'Master, I am here. 
You are my master, but I am yours. Go 
where you will, you can't travel without me.' 
— Pendennis, chap. Ixxi. 

DOUBT is always crying Psha! and 
sneering. — English Humourists (Con- 
greve and Addison). 

DREAMS 

SAY if is a dream: say it passes: better 
the recollection of a dream than an aim- 
less waking from a blank stupor. — Penden- 
nis, chap. Ixix. 

I NEVER know whether to pity or con- 
gratulate a man on coming to his senses. 
— The Virginians, chap. Ivi. 

THE delusion is better than the truth 
sometimes, and fine dreams than dis- 
mal waking. — Pendenms, chap. xix. 

DRESS 

AS in the old joke about a pudding which 
has two sides, namely, an inside and 
an outside, so a coat or hat has its inside as 
well as its outside; I mean, that there is in 



40 DRESS 

a man's exterior appearance the consequence 
of his inward ways of thought. . . . No 
man has a right to despise his dress in this 
world. There is no use in flinging any honest 
chance whatever away. . . . Yes: a good 
face, a good address, a good dress, are each 
so many points in the game of life, of 
which every man of sense will avail himself. 
They help many a man more in his com- 
merce with society than learning or genius. 
. . . Enjoy, my boy, in honesty and man- 
liness, the goods of this life. — Sketches and 
Travels in London ('On Tailoring and Toi- 
lettes in General'). 

WHEN you have got on your best coat 
and waistcoat, and have your dandy 
shirt and tie arranged — consider these as so 
many settled things, and go forward and 
through your business. That is why people 
in what is called the great world are com- 
monly better bred than persons less fortunate 
in their condition. Not that they are better 
in reality, but from circumstances they are 
never uneasy about their position in the world, 
therefore they are most honest and simple: 
therefore they are better bred than Growler, 
who scowls at the great man a defiance 
and a determination that he will not be 
trampled upon, or poor Fawner, who goes 
quivering down on his knees. . . . But I 
think in our world there are even more 



DULNESS 41 

Growlers than Fawners — SketcJtes and Trav- 
els in London (* On the Pleasures of Being a 
Fogy'). 

AND why should not this young fellow 
wear smart clothes, and a smart mus- 
tache, and look handsome, and take his 
pleasure and bask in his sun when it shone ? 
Time enough for flannel and a fire, when the 
winter comes; and for gray hair and corked 
soled boots in the natural decline of years. — 
The Ncwcomes, chap. xl. 

DULNESS 

WE know that though the greatest pleas- 
ure of all is to act like a gentleman, 
it is a pleasure, nay, a merit, to be one — to 
come of an old stock, to have an honourable 
pedigree, to be able to say that centuries 
back our fathers had gentle blood, and to 
us transmitted the same. There is a good 
in gentility: the man who questions it is en- 
vious, or a coarse dullard not able to perceive 
the difference between high breeding and low. 
One has in the same way heard a man brag 
that he did not know the difference between 
wines, not he — ' give him a good glass of port 
and he would pitch all your claret to the 
deuce.' Men often brag about their own 
dulness in this way. — Second Fwieral of 
Napoleon, chap. iii. 



42 ■ DULNESS 

THE very same superstition which leads 
men by the nose now drove them on- 
ward in the days when the lowly husband of 
Xantippe died for daring to think simply 
and to speak the truth. I know of no quality 
more magnificent in fools than their faith; 
that perfect consciousness they have that 
they are doing virtuous and meritorious ac- 
tions, when they are performing acts of folly, 
murdering Socrates, or pelting Aristides with 
holy oyster shells. . . . And a 'History of 
Dulness in All Ages of the World' is a 
book which a philosopher would surely be 
hanged, but as certainly blessed, for writing. 
— Cornhill to Cairo, chap. v. 

THERE is a quality in certain people 
which is above all advice, exposure or 
correction. Only let a man have Dulness 
sufficient, and they need bow to no extant 
authority. A dullard recognizes no betters; 
a dullard can't see that he is in the wrong; 
a dullard has no scruples of conscience, no 
doubts of pleasing, or succeeding or doing 
right, no qualms for other people's feelings, 
no respect but for the fool himself. How can 
you make a fool perceive that he is a fool? 
Such a personage can no more see his own 
folly than he can see his own ears. And the 
great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably 
contented with itself. What myriads of souls 
are there of this admirable sort — selfish, 



DUTY 43 

stingy, ignorant, brutal — never known to do 
kind actions! — Men's Wives ('Dennis Hag- 
gerty's Wife'). 

BUT dulness gets on as well as any other 
quality with women. — Vaniiy Fair, 
chap. xi. 

WHAT a deal of grief, care, and other 
harmful excitement does a healthy 
dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid! 
Dulness is a much finer gift than we give it 
credit for being, and some people are very 
lucky whom Nature has endowed with a 
good store of that great anodyne. — Penden- 
nis, chap. xvi. 

ALWAYS to be right, always to trample 
forward and never to doubt, are not 
these the great qualities with which dulness 
takes the lead in the world? — Vanity Fair, 
chap. xxxv. 



DUTY 

DOES not every day bring its own duty 
and task, and are these not enough to 
occupy one? — The Newcomes, chap. Ixviii. 

I DARE say Mrs. Bluebeard thought it was 
her duty to look through the keyhole. — 
The Virginians, chap. vii. 



44 FAME 

WHEN duty calls upon us, we no doubt 
are always at home and ready to 
pay. — English Humourists (Steele). 

FOR though duty is duty, when it comes 
to the pinch, it is often hard to do. — 
Philip, chap. xiv. 

A STOUT, bald-headed man dancing is 
a melancholy object to himself in the 
looking-glass opposite, and there are duties 
and pleasures of all ages. — Sketches and 
Travels in London (' The Influence of Lovely 
Woman on Society'). 



WE all want to know details regarding 
men who have achieved famous feats, 
whether of war, or wit, or eloquence, or en- 
durance, or knowledge. His one or two 
happy and heroic actions take a man's name 
and memory out of the crowd of names and 
memories. Henceforth he stands eminent. 
We scan him; we want to know all about 
him; we walk around and want to examine 
him, are curious, perhaps, and think are we 
not as strong and capable as yonder cham- 
pion? were we not bred as well and could 
we not endure the winter's cold as well 
as he? Or we look up with all our eyes of 
admiration, will find no fault in our hero. 



FORGIVENESS 45 

declare his beauty and proportions perfect, 
his critics envious detractors, and so forth. 
Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he 
was nobody. Who cared about his birth- 
place, his parentage, or the colour of his 
hair ? To-day, by some single achievement, 
or by a series of great actions, ... he is 
famous, and antiquarians are busy finding 
out under what schoolmaster's ferrule he was 
educated, where his grandmother was vac- 
cinated, and so forth. — Roundabout Papers 
('On a Joke I Once Heard from the late 
Thomas Hood'). 

TO be rich, to be famous ? What do these 
profit a year hence, when other names 
sound louder than yours? — Esmond, chap, 
vi, bk. ii. 

BUT do we like those only who are fa- 
mous ? As well say we will only give our 
regard to men who have ten thousand a year, 
or are more than six feet high. — Philip, 
chap. xxxi. 

FORGIVENESS 

WHAT can there be finer than forgive- 
ness? What more rational than, 
after calling a man by every bad name under 
the sun, to apologize, regret hasty expressions, 
and so forth, withdraw the decanter (say) 
which you have flung at your enemy's head, 
and be friends as before ? Some folks possess 



46 FORTUNE 

this admirable, this angel-like gift of forgive- 
ness. Let us strive, my friend, to acquire this 
pacable Christian spirit. My belief is that you 
may learn to forgive bad language employed 
to you; but then, you must have a deal of 
practice, and be accustomed to hear and use 
it. You embrace after a quarrel and mutual 
bad language. Heaven bless us! Bad words 
are nothing when one is accustomed to them, 
and scarce need ruffle the temper on either 
side. — The Virginians, chap, xxxviii. 

FORGIVING is what some women love 
best of all. — Pendennis, chap. xxi. 

I WONDER are there many real recon- 
ciliations? — Philip, chap, vii. 

HOW can I forget at will, how forgive ? — 
Roundabout Papers ('On Two Chil- 
dren in Black.') 

WHAT more can one say of the Chris- 
tian charity of a man than that he is 
actually ready to forgive those who have 
done him every kindness, and with whom he 
is wrong in a dispute ? — Pendennis, chap. Iv. 

FORTUNE 

AS according to the famous maxim of 
Monsieur de Rochefoucault, 'in our 
friend's misfortunes there's something secretly 



FORTUNE 47 

pleasant to us/ so, on the other hand, their 
good fortune is disagreeable. If 'tis hard for 
a man to bear his own good luck, 'tis harder 
still for his friends to bear it for him, and 
but few of them ordinarily can stand that 
trial: whereas one of the precious uses of 
adversity is, that it is a great reconciler, that 
it brings back averted kindness, disarms ani- 
mosity, and causes yesterday's enemy to fling 
his hatred aside, and hold out a hand to the 
fallen friend of old days. There's a pity and 
love, as well as envy, in the same heart, and 
towards the same person. The rivalry stops 
when the competitor tumbles; and, as I view 
it, we should look at these agreeable and 
disagreeable qualities of our humanity hum- 
bly alike. They are consequent and natu- 
ral, and our kindness and meanness both 
manly. — Esmond, chap, v, bk. ii. 

HE won because he did not want to win. 
Fortune, that notoriously coquettish 
jade, came to him, because he was thinking 
of another nymph, who possibly was as 
fickle. — The Virginians, chap. xix. 

THERE are some who never can pardon 
good fortune, and in the company of 
gentlemen are ever on the watch for ofifence. 
— Philip, chap. vi. 



48 FORTUNE 

MISFORTUNE drives a man into bad 
company. — Pendennis, chap, xxxii. 



BUT fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does 
not change men and women. It but 
develops their characters. As there are a 
thousand thoughts lying within a man that 
he does not know till he takes up the pen to 
write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or 
her) who has it in his own breast. Who hath 
not found himself surprised into revenge or 
action . . . for good or evil, whereof the 
seeds lay within him, latent and unsuspected, 
until the occasion called them forth? — Es- 
mond, chap, i, bk. ii. 

THE little ills of life are the hardest to 
bear, as we all very well know. What 
would be the possession of a hundred thou- 
sand a year, or fame, and the applause of 
one's country-men, or the loveliest and best- 
loved woman — of any glory and happiness, 
or good fortune, avail to a gentleman, for 
instance, who was allowed to enjoy them 
only with the condition of wearing a shoe 
with a couple of nails or sharp pebbles inside 
it? All fame and happiness would disap- 
pear, and plunge down that shoe. All life 
would rankle round those little nails. — The 
Newcomes, chap. Ixvi. 



FORTUNE 49 

MISFORTUNES do good in one way, 
hard as they are to bear: they unite 
people who love each other. — The Newcomes, 
chap. liv. 

I WILL accept a toothache (or any evil of 
life) and bear it without too much grum- 
bling. But I cannot say that to have a tooth 
pulled out is a blessing. — Philip, xl. 



T 



HERE is no fortune that a philosopher 
cannot endure.— Esmond, chap, xi, bk. ii. 



A MAN cannot live with comrades under 
the tents without finding out that he, 
too, is five-and-twenty. A young fellow can- 
not be cast down by grief and misfortune 
ever so severe, but some nights he begins to 
sleep sound, and some day when dinner-time 
comes to feel hungry for a beefsteak. — Es- 
mondy chap, v, bk. ii. 

FROM the loss of a tooth to that of a mis- 
tress there is no pang that is not bearable. 
The apprehension is much more cruel than the 
certainty; and we make up our mind to the mis- 
fortune when 'tis irremediable, part with the 
tormentor, and mumble our crust on t'other 
side of the jaws. — Esmond, chap, iv, bk. iii. 

MAN struggling with hardship and bravely 
overcoming it is an object of admira- 
tion for the gods. — Pendennis, chap. xlv. 



so FRIENDSHIP 

HOW many men are fickle to Fortune, 
run away frightened from her advances, 
and desert her who, perhaps, had never 
thought of leaving them but for their cow- 
ardice. — The Virginians, chap. xlii. 

IT has been asserted that Fortune has a good 
deal to do with the making of heroes, and 
thus hinted for the consolation of those who 
don't happen to be engaged in any stupendous 
victories, that had opportunity so served, they 
might have been heroes, too. — Roundabout 
Papers ('On Some Late Great Victories'). 

FRIENDSHIP 

CULTIVATE, kindly reader, those friend- 
ships of your youth: it is only in that 
generous time that they are formed. How 
difi'erent the intimacies of after days are, 
and how much weaker the grasp of our own 
hand after it has been shaken about in 
twenty years' commerce with the world, and 
has squeezed and dropped a thousand equally 
careless palms. As you can seldom fashion 
your tongue to speak a new language after 
twenty, the heart refuses to receive friend- 
ship pretty soon: it gets too hard to yield to 
the impression. — Pendennis, chap. Ixi. 

DID not Job's friends make many true re- 
marks when they visited him in his 
affliction ? Patient as he was, the patriarch 
groaned and lamented. — Philip, chap, xxxiv. 



FRIENDSHIP 51 

IT is the ordinary lot of people to have no 
friends if they themselves care for no- 
body. — Vanity Fair, chap. xiv. 

AFTER a certain age a new friend is a 
wonder. There is the age of blossoms 
and sweet budding green, the age of gener- 
ous summer, the autumn when the leaves 
drop, and then winter, shivering and bare. — 
Roundabout Papers ('On Letts's Diary'). 



w 



HEN we fall, how our friends cry out 
for us! — The Newcomes, chap. Ixi. 



WHAT is the secret mesmerism which 
friendship possesses, and under the 
operation of which a person ordinarily slug- 
gish, or cold, or timid, becomes wise, active, 
and resolute in another's behalf? In the 
affairs of the world and under the magnet- 
ism of friendship, the modest man becomes 
bold, the shy confident, the lazy active, or 
the impetuous prudent and peaceful. — 
Vanity Fair, chap, xxiii. 

PEOPLE of fashion are friendly to those 
who have plenty of friends. — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. ii. 

WHO goes about professing particular 
admiration or esteem, or friendship, 
or gratitude even, for the people one meets 
every day ? If A asks me to his house, and 



52 FRIENDSHIP 

gives me his best, I take his good things for 
what they are worth and no more. I do not 
profess to pay him back in friendship, but in 
the conventional money of society. When 
we part we part without any grief. When we 
meet we are tolerably glad to see one another. 
— Pendennis, chap. Ixi. 

IT is a friendly heart that has plenty of 
friends. — Sketches and Travels in Lon- 
don (' On Love, Marriage, Men and Women'). 

WHO does not see a friend's weaknesses, 
and is so blind that he cannot per- 
ceive that enormous beam in his neighbour's 
eye? — Philip, chap. v. 

WHO has not remarked the readiness 
with which the closest of friends 
. . . suspect and accuse each other of cheat- 
ing when they fall out on money matters? 
Everybody does it. Everybody is right, 
I suppose, and the world is a rogue. — 
Vanity Fair, chap, xviii. 

IF it were otherwise — if, forsooth, we 
were to be sorry when our friends died, 
or to draw out our purses when our friends 
were in want, we should be insolvent, and 
life would be miserable. Be it ours to but- 
ton up our pockets and our hearts, and to 
make merry — it is enough to swim down this 



GOSSIP 53 

life-stream for ourselves; if Poverty is clutch- 
ing hold of our heels, or Friendship would 
catch an arm, kick them both off. Every 
man for himself is the word, and plenty to 
do, too. — Men's Wives ('The Ravenswing,' 
chap. v.). 

AWEARY heart gets no gladness out of 
sunshine; a selfish man is sceptical about 
friendship, as a man with no ear doesn't 
care for music. — English Humourists (Swift). 

GOSSIP 

AND a lie once set going, having the 
breath of life breathed into it by the 
father of lying, and ordered to run its dia- 
bolical little course, lives with a prodigious 
vitality. . . . Great lies are as great as 
great truths and prevail constantly, and day 
after day. ... I once talked . . . with 
an amiable lady and saw an expression of 
surprise on her kind face, which said as 
plainly as a face could say, 'Sir, do you 
know that up to this moment I have had a 
certain opinion of you, and that I begin to 
think I have been mistaken or misled ? ' I 
not only know that she had heard evil re- 
ports of me, but I know who told her — one of 
those acute fellows, my dear brethren, . . . 
who has found me out — found out actions 
which I never did, found out thoughts and 



54 GOSSIP 

sayings which I never spoke, and judged me 
accordingly. . . . How comes it that the evil 
which men say spreads so widely and lasts so 
long, whilst our good kind words don't seem 
somehow to take root and bear blossom ? Is 
it that in the stony hearts of mankind these 
pretty flowers can't find a place to grow? 
Certain it is that scandal is good, brisk talk, 
whereas praise of one's neighbour is by no 
means lively hearing. An acquaintance 
grilled, scored, devilled, and served with 
mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the 
appetite, whereas a slice of cold friend with 
currant jelly is but a sickly unrelishing meat. 
— Roundabout Papers ('On a Hundred 
Years Hence'). 

WONDERFUL is the knowledge which 
our neighbours have of our affairs. — 
The Virginians, chap, xxviii. 

PRAISE everybody and everybody will 
smile on you in return, a sham smile, 
and hold you out a sham hand, and, in a 
word, esteem you as you deserve. No, I 
think you and I will take the ups and the 
downs, the roughs and the smooths of this 
daily existence and conversation. We will 
praise those whom we like, though nobody 
repeat our kind sayings and say our say 
about those whom we dislike, though we are 
pretty sure our words will be carried by tale- 



GOSSIP 55 

bearers, and increased and multiplied, and 
remembered long after we have forgotten 
them. We drop a little stone — a little stone 
that is swallowed up and disappears, but the 
whole pond is set in commotion, and ripples 
in continually widening circles long after the 
original little stone has popped down and is 
out of sight. Don't your speeches of ten 
years ago — maimed, distorted, bloated it may 
be, out of all recognition — come strangely 
back to their author ? — Philip, chap. ix. 

WHO does know the stories that are 
told of him? Who makes them? 
Who are the fathers of those wondrous lies? 
— The Virginians, chap, xxviii. 

WHO but a gabby ever spoke ill of a 
woman to her sweetheart? He will 
tell her everything, and they both will hate 
you. — The Virginians, chap. xvii. 

HOW can you prevent servants talking or 
listening when the faithful attached 
creatures talk to you. — The Virginians, 
chap. xxii. 

YOU know, neighbour, there are not only 
false teeth in this world, but false 
tongues. — Roundahout Papers ('On a Medal 
of George the Fourth'). 



56 GOSSIP 

THE Blackest of all Blacks is said not to be 
of quite so dark a complexion as some folks 
describe him to be. — The Virginians, chap. Ivi. 

HEAVEN help us! if some people were to 
do penance for telling lies, would they 
ever be out of sackcloth and ashes? — The 
Virginians, chap. xl. 

IF pride exists amongst any folks in our 
country, and assuredly we have enough 
of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than 
that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small 
towns. ' Gracious goodness' the cry was, 'how 
infatuated the mother is about that pert and 
headstrong boy . . . for whom our society 
is not good enough.' . . . Naturally haughty 
and frank, their cackle and small talk and 
small dignities bored him, and he showed 
a contempt which he could not conceal. 
. . . Even Mrs. Portman shared in the 
general distrust of him and his mother, the 
widow who kept herself aloof from the vil- 
lage society, and was sneered at accordingly. 
— Pendennis, chap. xv. 

PERSONALITIES are odious.— C/^ar- 
ader Sketches ('The Artists'). 



w 



"HAT were life worth if a man were 
forced to put himself a la piste of all 
the calumnies uttered against him? — The 
Virginians, chap. Ixxxix. 



HAPPINESS 57 



HAPPINESS 

HAPPINESS often disdains the turrets of 
kings to pay a visit to the tabernas 
pauperum. — Sketches (' Cairo ') . 

WHICH of us can point out and say 
that was the culmination — that was 
the summit of human joy? — Vanity Fair, 
chap. Ixii. 

THE good we have in us we doubt of; and 
the happiness that's to our hand we 
throw a.wa.y. ^Esmond, chap, iii, bk. iii. 

HOW happy he whose foot fits the shoe 
which fortune gives him! — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. xci. 

HAPPY! Who is happy? what good is a 
stalled ox for dinner every day, and no 
content therewith ? Is it best to be loved and 
plagued by those you love, or to have an 
easy, comfortable indifference at home; to 
follow your fancies, live there unmolested, 
and die without causing any painful regret 
or tears? — The Virginians, chap. xiii. 

BUT a title and a coach and four are toys 
more precious than happiness in Vanity 
Fair. — Vanity Fair, chap. ix. 



58 HATRED 

AH! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is 
happy in this world? which of us has 
his desire? or having it, is satisfied? — Vanity 
Fair, chap. Ixvii. 

WELL, some people cannot drive to hap- 
piness even with four horses, and 
other folks can reach the goal on foot. — 
Philip, chap, xxxii. 

HAPPY, who is happy ? Was not there 
a serpent in Paradise itself, and if 
Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, 
would she have listened to him? — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. iv. 

TO be able to bestow benefits or happiness 
on those one loves is sure the greatest 
blessing conferred upon a man. — Esmond, 
chap, ii, bk. iii. 

SOME folks are happy and easy in mind 
when their victim is stabbed and done 
for. — The Virginians, chap. xx. 



H 



OW shall there be joy at meeting vidth- 
out tears at parting? — Burlesques. 



HATRED 



WHY should we overcome such instincts ? 
. . . Why shouldn't we hate what is 
hateful in people, and scorn what is mean? 
— The Newcomes, liv. 



HATRED 59 

ONE of the great conditions of anger and 
hatred is, that you must tell and believe 
lies against the hated object, in order to be 
consistent. — Vanity Fair, chap, xviii. 



WHAT is sheer hate seems to the indi- 
vidual entertaining the sentiment so 
like indignant virtue, that he often indulges 
in the propensity to the full, nay, lauds him- 
self for the exercise of it. — The Newcotnes, 
chap. Ixiv. 

WHEN one man has been under very 
remarkable obligations to another 
with whom he subsequently quarrels, a com- 
mon sense of decency, as it were, makes of the 
former a much severer enemy than a mere 
stranger would be. To account for your own 
hard-heartedness and ingratitude in such a 
case, you are bound to prove the other party's 
crime. . . . From a mere sense of consis- 
tency, a persecutor is bound to show that 
the fallen man is a villain, otherwise he, the 
persecutor, is a wretch himself. — Vanity Fair, 
chap, xviii. 

THE blows which wound most, often are 
those which never are aimed. The 
people who hate us are not those we have 
injured. — The Virginians, chap. Ixxxvii. 



6o HATRED 

PEOPLE hate as they love, unreasonably. 
Whether is it the more mortifying to us, 
to feel that we are disliked or liked unde- 
servedly? — The Newcomes, chap. Ivi. 

THERE are enmities which the heart does 
not recognize. — The Virginians, chap. vii. 

TWO sailors when the boat's a-sinking, 
though they hate each other ever so 
much, will help and bale the boat out. — 
Men's Wives ('The Ravenswing,' chap. ii.). 

AH me! we wound where we never in- 
tended to strike; we create anger where 
we never meant harm. . . . Out of mere 
malignity, I suppose, there is no man who 
would like to make enemies. ... Do what 
I will, be innocent or spiteful, be generous or 
cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, who 
will hate me to the end of the chapter — to the 
chapter's end — to the Finis of the page — 
when hate, and envy, and fortune, and disap- 
pointment shall be over. — Roundabout Pa- 
pers ('Thorns in the Cushion'). 

YOU have no doubt remarked in your ex- 
perience of life, that when men do hate 
each other, the real reason is never assigned. 
You say 'The conduct of such and such a 
man to his grandmother — his behaviour in 
selling that horse to Benson — his manner of 



HYPOCRISY 6i 

brushing his hair down the middle ' — or what 
you will — 'makes him so offensive to me 
that I can't endure him.' . . . Allans done/ 
. . . The man who hates us gives a reason, 
but not the reason. — Lovel the Widower, 
chap. iv. 

I NEVER wronged a man so much as to 
be obliged to hate him afterward. — Denis 
Duval, chap. viii. 

HYPOCRISY 

THERE is some hypocrisy of which one 
does not like even to entertain the 
thought; especially that awful falsehood 
which trades with divine truth, and takes 
the name of Heaven in vain. — The New- 
comes, chap. Ixix. 

EVERY person who manages another is 
a hypocrite. — Sketches and Travels in 
London ('On Love, Marriage, Men and 

Women'). 

WHERE there is not equality, there 
must be hypocrisy. — The Virginians, 
chap. XXX. 

OH, let us be thankful, not only for faces, 
but for masks! not only for honest 
welcome, but for hypocrisy, which hides un- 



62 HYPOCRISY 

welcome things from us! Hypocrisy is true 
virtue. . . , Oh, if every man spoke his 
mind, what an intolerable society ours would 
be to live in, — The Virginians, chap. Ivi. 

WOMEN go through this simpering, and 
smiling life, and bear it quite easily. 
Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. . . . But men 
are not provided with such powers of hum- 
bug or endurance — they perish and pine 
away miserably when bored — or they shrink 
off to the club for comfort. — The Newcomes, 
chap. xl. 

ABOUT your most common piece of hy- 
pocrisy how men will blush and bungle: 
how easily, how gracefully, how consum- 
mately women will perform it! — Philip, 
chap. iv. 

^ npIS an error, surely, to talk of the sim- 
A plicity of youth. I think no persons 
are more hypocritical and have a more 
affected behaviour to one another than the 
young. They deceive themselves and each 
other with artifices that do not impose upon 
men of the world, and so we get to under- 
stand truth better, and grow simpler as we 
grow older. — Esmond, chap, ix, bk. 1. 

TO the necessary deceits and hypocrisies 
of life why add any that are useless and 
unnecessary? — Pendennis, chap. Ixiv. 



HYPOCRISY 63 

IN her griefs, in her rages, . . . how a 
woman remembers to smile, curtsy, . . . 
dissemble ! How resolutely they discharge the 
social proprieties; how they have a word, 
. . . or a kind little speech, or reply for the 
passing acquaintance who crosses unknowing 
the path of the tragedy! — The Virginians, 
chap. xxvi. 

WOMEN bear with hard words more 
easily than men, are more ready to 
forgive injuries or, perhaps, to dissemble 
anger. — The Virginians, chap. xiii. 

SOMETIMES it is hard to say where 
honest pride ends and hypocrisy begins. 
— Philip, chap. iv. 

LET us apply to the human race, dear 
brethren, what is here said of the vin- 
tages of Portugal and Gascony, and we shall 
have no difficulty in perceiving how many 
clarets aspire to be ports in their way, 
how most men and women of our acquaint- 
ance . . . wish to have credit for being 
. . . more worthy than we really are. Nay, 
the beginning of this hypocrisy — a desire to 
excel, a desire to be hearty, . . . fruity, 
generous, strength-imparting — is a virtuous 
and noble ambition; and it is most difficult 
for a man in his own case or his neighbour's 
to say at what point this ambition trans- 
gresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes 



64 HYPOCRISY 

vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. . . . 
And when we have done discussing our men 
friends, have we not all the women? Do 
these not advance absurd pretensions? Do 
these never give themselves airs ? With feeble 
brains don't they often set up to be esprits 
forts? Don't they pretend to be women of 
fashion and cut their betters ? Don't they try 
and pass off their ordinary-looking girls as 
beauties of the first order ? Every man in his 
circle knows women who give themselves 
airs and to whom we can apply the port- 
wine simile. — Roundabout Papers ('Small- 
Beer Chronicle'). 

HE had the dissimulation, too, which timid 
men have; and felt the presence of a 
victimiser as a hare does of a greyhound. 
Now he would be quite still, now he would 
double, and now he would run, and then 
came the end. — Men's Wives ('The Ravens- 
wing,' chap. ii.). 

I RECOLLECT how, ... at school, 
. . . the cowardly mean-spirited fellows 
would laugh if ever our school-master made 
a joke. It was the same in the regiment 
whenever the bully of a sergeant was dis- 
posed to be jocular — not a recruit but was 
on the broad grin. ... I confided, per- 
haps, too much in the duration of this dis- 
ciplined obedience, and forgot that the very 



HYPOCRISY 65 

hypocrisy j»-hich forms a part of it (all timid 
people are liars in their hearts) may be exerted 
in a way that may be far from agreeable, in or- 
der to deceive you. — Barry Lyndon, chap. xix. 

FOR to speak of Heaven in connection 
with common, worldly matters has al- 
ways appeared to me irreverent; and to 
bring it to bear witness to the lie in his mouth, 
as a religious hypocrite does, is such a fright- 
ful crime, that one should be careful even in 
alluding to it. — The Great Hoggarty Diamond, 
chap. X. 

BY humbly and frankly acknowledging 
yourself to be in the wrong, there is no 
knowing, my son, what good you may do. I 
knew once a gentleman ... in Vanity Fair, 
who used to do little wrongs to his neigh- 
bours on purpose, and in order to apologise for 
them in an open and manly way afterward — 
and what ensued ? My friend Crocky Doyle 
was liked everywhere — and deemed to be 
rather impetuous, but the honestest fellow. 
Becky's humility passed for sincerity. — Van- 
ity Fair, chap. xxii. 

BY that wondrous hypocrisy and power of 
disguise which women practise and 
with which weapons of defence nature en- 
dows them, the traces of her emotion disap- 
peared. — Pendennis, chap. li. 



66 IDLENESS— JEALOUSY 



IDLENESS 

O BLESSED Idleness! Divine lazy 
Nymph! Dear, smiling Enchantress! 
They may assail thee with bad names, and 
call thee the Mother of Evil; but, for all 
that, thou art the best company in the world. 
— The Virginians, chap. xxix. 

THERE is a good old, loose, easy, slovenly, 
bedgown laziness for example. What 
man of sense likes to fling it off, and put on 
a tight, guinde, prim dresscoat that pinches 
him? There is the cozy wraprascal, self- 
indulgence — how easy it is. It is a little slat- 
ternly — allons done, let the world call me 
idle and sloven, I love my ease better than 
my neighbour's opinion. — Roundabout Pa- 
pers ('On Letts 's Diary'). 

JEALOUSY 

THERE is a complaint which neither 
poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the 
drowsy syrups of the East could allay, in the 
men of his time, as we are informed by a 
popular poet of the days of Elizabeth; and 
which, when exhibited in women, no medical 
discoveries nor mesmerism can cure, and 
that is — we won't call it jealousy, but rather 
gently denominate it rivalry and emulation 
in ladies. — Pendennis, chap. lii. 



JEALOUSY 67 

IN plays and novels, and I dare say in real 
life, too, sometimes, when the wanton 
heroine chooses to exert her powers of fas- 
cination, and to flirt with Sir Henry or the 
Captain, the hero, in a pique, goes off and 
makes love to somebody else; both acknowl- 
edge their folly after awhile and are recon- 
ciled and the curtain drops, or the volume 
ends. But there are some people too noble 
and simple for these amorous scenes and 
smirking artifices. — The Newcomes, chap, 
xxxiii. 

AN exhibition of jealousy on a man's part 
is not always disagreeable to a lady. — 
Pendennis, chap, xxxvi. 

TO our betters we can reconcile ourselves, 
if you please, respecting them very sin- 
cerely, laughing at their jokes, making allow- 
ance for their stupidities, meekly sufi'ering 
their insolence; but we can't pardon our 
equals going beyond us. — A Shabby Genteel 
Story, chap. iii. 

MOST of the family quarrels that I have 
seen in life (saving those always aris- 
ing from money-disputes, when a division of 
twopence halfpenny will often drive the 
dearest relatives into war and estrangement), 
spring out of jealousy and envy. — Esmond, 
chap. V, bk. ii. 



68 JEALOUSY 

AND about ourselves? My good people, 
do you by chance know any man or 
woman who has formed unjust conclusions 
regarding his neighbour? Have you ever 
found yourself willing, nay, eager, to believe 
evil of some man whom you hate? Whom 
you hate because he is successful and you are 
not: because he is rich and you are poor: 
because he dines with great men who don't 
invite you : because he wears a silk gown and 
yours is still stuff: , . . because his pic- 
tures have been bought, and yours returned 
home unsold : because he fills his church and 
you are preaching [to empty pews ? If your 
rival prospers, have you ever felt a twinge of 
anger? If his wife's carriage passes you 
and Mrs. Tomkins, who are in a cab, don't 
you feel that those people are giving them- 
selves absurd airs of importance? If he 
lives with great people are you not sure he 
is a sneak ? And if you ever felt envy to- 
ward another, and if . . . you have been 
peevish at his success, pleased to hear his 
merit depreciated, and eager to believe all 
that is said in his disfavour, ... as you 
yourself contritely own that you are unjust, 
jealous, uncharitable, so you may be sure 
some men are uncharitable, jealous, and 
unjust regarding yon. — Roundabout Papers 
('Strange to Say on Club Paper'). 



JUSTICE 69 

WOMEN are jealous of beauties. — The 
Newcomes, chap. xlix. 

TO be despised by her sex is a very good 
compliment to a woman. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. xii. 

''"T^IS Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a 
-■- chair, that sickens at Mrs. Tom's new 
coach-and-six, cries out against her sister's 
airs, and sets her husband against his broth- 
er. 'Tis Jack who sees his brother shaking 
hands with a lord (with whom Jack would 
like to exchange snuff-boxes himself) that 
goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom 
is spoiled, he fears, and no better than a 
sneak, parasite, and beggar on horseback. — 
Esmond, chap, v, bk. ii. 

HOW is this? some carping reader ex- 
claims. How is it that Amelia, who 
had such a number of friends at school, and 
was so beloved there, comes out into the 
world and is spurned by her discriminating 
sex ? My dear sir, there were no men at Miss 
Pinkerton's establishment, except the old 
dancing master. — Vanity Fair, chap. xii. 

JUSTICE 

THE book of female logic is blotted all 
over with tears, and Justice in their 
courts is forever in a passion. — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. iv. 



70 JUSTICE 

BUT the Judge who sees not the outward 
acts merely, but their causes, and views 
not the wrong alone, but the temptations, 
struggles, ignorance of erring creatures, we 
know has a different code to ours, to ours, 
who fall upon the fallen, who fawn upon the 
prosperous so, who administer our praises 
and punishments so prematurely, who now 
strike so hard, and anon, spare so shamelessly. 
— The Newcomes, chap. Ixi. 

INDEED, who ever accused women of be- 
ing just? They are always sacrificing 
themselves or somebody for somebody else's 
sake. — Pendennis, chap. iii. 

WOMEN won't see matters of fact in a 
matter-of-fact point of view, and jus- 
tice, unless it is linked with a little romance, 
gets no respect from them. — Philip, chap. xvii. 

SO it is, we judge men by our own stand- 
ards; judge our nearest and dearest often 
wrong. — The Newcomes, chap. Ixiii. 

WE have but to change the point ot 
view and the greatest action looks 
mean. — Esmond, chap, x, bk. ii. 

WHO are we to measure the chances and 
opportunities, the means of doing, or 
even judging, . . . awarded to men; and 
to establish the rule for meting out their pun- 



JUSTICE 71 

ishments and rewards. . . . Into a next 
and awful world we strive to pursue men and 
send after them our impotent verdicts of 
condemnation or acquittal. Measured by 
that altitude, the tallest and the smallest 
among us are so alike diminutive and piti- 
fully base, that I say we should take no 
count of the calculation, and it is a meanness 
to reckon the difference. — Pendennis, chap. 
Ixi. 

YOU can but make guesses as to character 
more or less happy. In common life, 
don't you often judge and misjudge a man's 
whole conduct, setting out from a wrong im- 
pression? The tone of a voice, a word said 
in joke, or a trifle in behaviour — the cut of 
his hair or the tie of his neck-cloth may dis- 
figure him in your eyes, or poison your good 
opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy, 
it may be your closest friend says something, 
reveals something, which had previously 
been a secret, which alters all your views 
about him, and shows that he has been acting 
on quite a different motive to that which 
you fancied you knew. If it is so with those 
you know, how much more with those you 
don't know. — English Humourists (Steele). 



72 KINDNESS 



KINDNESS 

KINDNESS is very indigestible. It disa- 
grees with proud stomachs. I wonder 
was that traveller who fell among the thieves 
grateful afterward to the Samaritan who 
rescued him ? He gave money, certainly, but 
he did not miss it. O brother, may we help 
the fallen still, though they never pay us, and 
may we lend without exacting the usury of 
gratitude! — Philip, chap, xxiii. 

TO receive small kindnesses flatters the 
donors very much, and people must 
needs grow well disposed toward you as they 
give you their hospitality. — Pendennis, chap. 



KINDNESSES are easily forgotten; but 
injuries! what worthy man does not 
keep those in mind? — Lovel the Widower, 
chap. i. 

THE world is full of love and pity, I say. 
Had there been less suffering, there 
would have been less kindness. — Philip, 
chap. XXV. 

TN youth, you see, one is touched by kind- 
■■■ ness. A man of the world may, of course, 
be grateful or not, as he chooses. — The New- 
comes, chap. i. 



KINDNESS 73 

A GOOD action gains to be repeated. — 
The Newcomes, chap, xlvii. 

A GOOD thing when it is to be done had 
best be done quickly. — The Newcomes, 
chap. Ixii. 

WHAT are benefits, what is constancy, 
or merit? One curl of a girl's ring- 
lets, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale 
against them all in a minute. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. Ixvi. 

TO be doing good for someone else is the 
life of most good women. They are 
exuberant of kindness, as it were, and must 
impart it. — Esmond, chap, ix, bk. i. 

NO man whose early nurture M'as kindly 
can judge quite impartially the man 
who has been kind to him in boyhood. — Phil- 
ip, chap. ii. 

TO perform a kindness, an act of self- 
sacrifice, are not these the most delicious 
privileges of female tenderness? — Philip, 
chap. xvi. 

A KINDNESS or a slight puts a man 
under one flag or the other. — Esmond, 
chap. V, bk. iii. 



74 KINDNESS 

HER heart melted, I suppose (indeed she 
hath since owned as much), at the no- 
tion that she should do anything unkind 
to any mortal, great or small; for when she 
returned, she had sent away the housekeeper 
. . . and, coming back to the lad, with a 
look of infinite pity and tenderness in her 
eyes, she took his hand again, placing her other 
fair hand on his head, and saying some words 
to him, which were so kind, and said in a voice 
so sweet, that the boy who had never looked 
upon so much beauty before, felt as if the 
touch of a superior being or angel smote him 
down to the ground, and kissed the fair pro- 
tecting hand as he knelt on one knee. — Es- 
mond, chap, i, bk. i. 

WITH love and simplicity and natural 
kindness. Snobbishness is perpetually 
at war. People dare not be happy for fear 
of Snobs. People dare not love for fear of 
Snobs. People pine away lonely under the 
tyranny of Snobs. Honest, kindly hearts dry 
up and die. Gallant, generous lads, bloom- 
ing with hearty youth, swell into . . . 
bachelorhood . . . from whom Snobbish- 
ness has cut off the common claim to hap- 
piness and affection with which Nature en- 
dowed us all. My heart grows sad as I see 
the blundering tyrant's handiwork. As I be- 
hold it I swell with rage and glow with fury 
against the Snob. Come down, I say, thou 



LAUGHTER 75 

skulking dulness. Come down, thou stupid 
bully, and give up thy brutal ghost. — The 
Book of Snobs, chap, xxxiii. 

ALL this kindness Laura had acquired, not 
by any arts, not by any flattery, but by 
the simple force of good-nature, and by the 
blessed gift of pleasing and being pleased. — 
Pendennis, chap. Ixvi. 

LAUGHTER 

CAN'T you like a man at whom you laugh 
a little? I had rather such an open- 
mouthed conversationalist than your cau- 
tious jaws that never unlock without a care- 
ful application of the key. — Philip, chap. xxx. 

I DO know one or two, but only one or two 
faces Oi men, when oppressed with care, 
which can yet smile all over. — Philip, chap. iii. 

STUPID people, people who do not know 
how to laugh, are always pompous and 
self -conceited, that is, bigoted, that is, cruel: 
that is, ungentle, uncharitable, unchristian. 
— Sketches and Travels in London. ('On 
Love, Marriage, Men and Women')- 

A WOMAN without a laugh in her . . . 
is the greatest bore in existence. — 
Sketches and Travels in London. ('On Love, 
Marriage, Men and Women'). 



76 LETTERS 

AND then both burst out laughing, as 
ladies will laugh, and as, let us trust, 
they vtay laugh forever and ever. Why need 
there be a reason for laughing ? Let us laugh 
when we are laughy, as we sleep when we are 
sleepy. — Men's Wives ('The Ravenswing,' 
chap. i.). 

A MAN who does not laugh outright is a 
dullard, and has no heart. — Critical 
Reviews (George Cruikshank). 

TO laugh and make laugh, though always 
with a secret kindness and tenderness, 
to perform the drollest little antics and capers, 
... as you may have seen a Savoyard boy 
abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, 
turning over head and heels, or clattering and 
pirouetting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet al- 
ways with a look of love and appeal in his 
bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins 
affection and protection. Happy they who 
have that sweet gift of nature! — English 
Humourists. ('Prior, Gay and Pope'). 

LETTERS 

I NEVER knew any good to come of v^Tit- 
ing more than hon jour or business. . . , 
What is the use of writing ill, when there 
are so many clever people who can do it well ? 
and even then it were best left alone. — The 
Virginians, chap. xlii. 



LETTERS 77 

OF what use keeping letters ? I say, burn, 
burn, burn. No heart-pangs, no re- 
proaches, no yesterday. Was it happy, or 
miserable? To think of it is always melan- 
choly. — Philip, chap, xviii. 



PERHAPS in Vanity Fair there are no bet- 
ter satires than letters. Take a bundle 
of your dear friend^s of ten years back — your 
dear friend whom you hate now. . . . Vows, 
love, promises, confidences, gratitude, how 
queerly they read after a while! There 
ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering 
the destruction of every written document 
. . . after a certain brief and proper in- 
terval. . . . The best ink for Vanity Fair 
to use would be one that faded utterly in a 
couple of days and left the paper clean and 
blank so that you might write on it to some- 
body else. — Vanity Fair, chap. xLx. 

PEOPLE in country houses should be 
exceedingly careful about their blotting 
paper. They should bring their own port- 
folios with them. If any kind readers will 
bear this simple little hint in mind, how 
much mischief may they save themselves — 
nay, enjoy possibly, by looking at the pages 
of the next port-folio in the next friend's 
bed-room in which they sleep. — The New- 
comes, chap. Ix. 



78 LETTERS 

IN the faded ink on the yellow paper that 
may have crossed and recrossed oceans, 
that has lain locked in chests for years and 
buried under piles of family archives, while 
your friends have been dying and your head 
has grown white — who has not disinterred 
mementoes like these — from which the past 
smiles at you so sadly, shimmering out of 
Hades an instant but to sink back again into 
the cold shades perhaps with a faint, faint 
sound as of a remembered tone — a ghostly 
echo of a once familiar laugh ? . . . Which 
of us has not had his Pompeii? Deep 
under ashes lies the Life of Youth — the care- 
less Sport, the Pleasure, . . . and the dar- 
ling Joy ? You open an old letter box and 
look at your own childish scrawls, or your 
mother's letters to you when you were at 
school, and excavate your heart. Oh me, for 
the day when the whole City shall be bare 
and the chambers unroofed and every cranny 
visible to the Light above, from the Forum 
to the Lupanar. — The Newcomes, chap. 



SHE wrapped up Pen's letters . . . and 
tied them with a piece of string neatly, 
as she would a parcel of sugar. Nor was 
she in the least moved while performing 
this act, V/hat hours the boy had passed 
over those papers! What love and longing, 
what generous faith and manly devotion. 



LIFE 79 

. . She tied them up hke so much grocery, 
and sat down and made tea afterward with 
a perfectly placid and contented heart.— 
Pendennis, chap. xii. 

AS we look at the slim characters on the 
yellow page, fondly kept and put aside, 
we can almost fancy him alive who wrote 
and who read it, and yet, lo! they are as if 
they never had been; their portraits faint 
images in frames of tarnished gold. Were 
they real once, or are they mere phantasms ? 
. . . Did they live and die once ? Can we 
hear their voices in the past ? — The Virgin- 
ians, chap. xii. 

A GENTLEMAN who writes letters a 
deux fins, and having poured out his 
heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish 
rechauffe to a friend, is not very much in 
earnest about his loves, however much he 
may be in his piques and vanities when his 
impertinence gets its due. — English Hu- 
mourists ('Prior, Gay and Pope'). 

LIFE 

WHICH is the most reasonable, and does 
his duty best: he who stands aloof 
from the struggle of life, calmly contem- 
plating it, or he who descends to the ground, 
and takes his part in the contest? That 



8o LIFE 

philosopher . . . had held a great place 
amongst the leaders of the world, and enjoyed 
to the full what it had to give of rank and 
riches, renown and pleasure, who came weary- 
hearted out of it, and said that all was vanity 
and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of 
those whom we reverence, and who steps out 
of his carriage up to his carved cathedral 
place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet 
cushion, and cries out that the whole struggle 
is an accursed one, and the works of the 
world are evil. Many a conscience-stricken 
mystic flies from it altogether, and shuts him- 
self out from it within convent walls (real or 
spiritual) whence he can only look up to the 
sky, and contemplate the heaven out of 
which there is no rest, and no good. 

But the earth, where our feet are, is the 
work of the same Power as the immeasurable 
blue yonder, in which the future lies into 
which we would peer, who ordered toil as 
the condition of life, ordered weariness, or- 
dered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, suc- 
cess, to this man a foremost place, to the 
other a nameless struggle with the crowd — to 
that a shameful fall — or paralyzed limb, or 
sudden accident — to each some work upon 
the ground he stands on, until he is laid be- 
neath it. — Pendennis, chap. xliv. 



LIFE 8i 

DOES a week pass without the announce- 
ment of the discovery of a new comet in 
the sky, a new star in the heaven, twinkhng 
dimly out of a yet farther distance, and only 
now becoming visible to human ken, though 
existent forever and ever ? So let us hope di- 
vine truths may be shining, and regions of light 
and love extant, which Geneva glasses can- 
not yet perceive, and are beyond the focus of 
Roman telescopes. — The Newcomes, chap. Ixv. 

REMEMBER that there are perils in our 
battle, God help us, from which the 
bravest had best run away. — The Newcomes, 
chap. XXX. 

THE object of life as I take it is to be 
friendly with everybody. As a rule, 
and to a philosophical cosmopolite, every 
man ought to be welcome. I do not mean to 
your intimacy or affection, but to your so- 
ciety, as there is, if we would or could but 
discover it, something notable, something 
worthy of observation, of sympathy, of won- 
der and amusement in every fellow mortal. — 
Sketches and Travels in London (* On a Lady 
in an Opera-box'). 

WE alter very little. When we talk of 
this man or that woman being no 
longer the same person whom we remember 
in youth, and remark (of course, to deplore) 
changes in our friends, we don't perhaps. 



82 LIFE 

calculate that circumstance only brings out 
the latent defect or quality, and does not 
create it. The selfish languor and indifference 
of to-day's possession is the consequence of 
the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the 
scorn and weariness which cries vanitas 
vanitatum, is but the lassitude of the sick 
appetite palled with pleasure: the insolence 
of the successful parvenu is only the neces- 
sary continuance of the career of the needy 
struggler: our mental changes are like our 
gray hairs or our wrinkles — but the fulfilment 
of the plan of mortal growth and decay: that 
calm weariness, benevolent, resigned, and 
disappointed, was ambition, fierce and vio- 
lent, but a few years since, and has only set- 
tled into submissive repose after many a 
battle and defeat. Lucky he who can bear 
his failure so generously, and give up his 
broken sword to Fate the Conqueror, with a 
manly and humble heart! Are you not awe- 
stricken, you, friendly reader, who, taking 
the page up for a moment's light reading, 
lay it down, perchance, for a graver reflection, 
— to think how you, who have consummated 
your success or your disaster, may be holding 
marked station, or a hopeless and nameless 
place, in the crowd — who have passed 
through how many struggles of defeat, suc- 
cess, crime, remorse, to yourself only known! 
who may have loved and grown cold, wept 
and laughed again, how often ! to think how 



LIFE 8s 

you are the same You whom in childhood 
you remember, before the voyage of life be- 
gan? It has been prosperous, and you are 
riding into port, the people huzzaing and the 
guns saluting — and the lucky captain bows 
from the ship's side, and there is a care 
under the star on his breast which nobody 
knows of: or you are wrecked, and lashed, 
hopeless, to a solitary spar out at sea: the 
sinking man and the successful one are think- 
ing each about home, very likely, and re- 
membering the time when they were children; 
alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of 
sight; alone in the midst of the crowd ap- 
plauding you. — Pendennis, chap. lix. 

ONLY very wilful and silly children cry 
after the moon. Sensible people who 
have shed their sweet tooth can't be expected 
to be very much interested about honey. 
. . . Life is labour. Life is duty. Life is 
rent. Life is taxes. Life brings it-s ills, bills, 
doctor's pills. Life is not a mere calendar 
of honey and moonshine. Very good. But 
without love, . . . life is just death and I 
know . . . you would no more care to go 
on with it. — Philips chap, xxxiii. 

MY amiable reader, acknowledge that 
you and I in life pretty much go our 
own way. We eat the dishes we like because 
we like them, not because our neighbour 



84 LIFE 

relishes them. We rise early or sit up late; 
we work, idle, smoke, or what not, because 
we choose so to do. — Philip, chap. xxxi. 

WHAT can be said but that men and 
women are imperfect, and human 
life not entirely pleasant or profitable. — The 
Virginians, chap. v. 

THE pavement of life is strewed with 
orange-peel; and who hath not slipped 
on the flags ? — Philip, chap. xxxv. 

ONE supports the combats of life, but they 
are long, and one comes from them very 
wounded. — The Neivcomes, chap. liii. 

WHAT is it that interests me so ? What 
do you suppose interests a man the 
most in this life? Himself, to be sure. — 
Sketches in London. ('On a Lady in An 
Opera Box'). 

IS not one story as stale as the other ? are not 
they all alike? What is the use, I say, 
of telling them over and over. . , . Whole 
chapters might have been written to chronicle 
all these circumstances, but a quoi hen ? The 
incidents of life . . . resemble each other 
so much that I am surprised, gentlemen and 
ladies, you read novels any more. . . . But 
cui bono? I say again, What is the good 



LIFE 85 

of telling the story? . . . Take your story: 
take mine. To-morrow it shall be Miss 
Fanny's, . . . and next day it shall be 
Baby's. — The Virginians, chap, xviii. 

SOME dinners are dear though they cost 
nothing. — Philip, chap. xix. 

AS Pain produces or elicits fortitude and 
endurance; difficulty, perseverance; 
poverty, industry and ingenuity; danger, 
courage and what not; so the very virtues, on 
the other hand, will generate some vices. — 
Pendennis, chap. ii. 

WE do a thing — which of us has not ? not 
because 'everybody does it,' but be- 
cause we like it; and our acquiescence, alas! 
proves not that everybody is right, but that 
we and the rest of the world are poor creat- 
ures alike. — Pendennis, chap. Ixiv. 

A PERSON who is used to making sacri- 
fices, who has got such a habit of giving 
up her own pleasure for others, can do the 
business quite easily. — Pendennis, chap. li. 

HEARTS as brave and resolute as ever 
beat in the breast of any wit or poet, 
sicken and break daily in the vain endeavour 
and unavailing struggle against life's difficulty. 
Don't we see daily ruined inventors, gray- 
haired midshipmen, balked heroes, barris- 



86 LIFE 

ters pining a hungry life out iu <,nambers, the 
attorneys never mounting to their garrets, 
whilst scores of them are rapping at the 
door of the successful quack below ? If these 
sufiFer, who is the author that he should be 
exempt ? Let us bear our ills with the same 
constancy with which others endure them, 
accept our manly part in life, hold our own 
and ask no more. — English Humourists 
('Sterne and Goldsmith'). 

THERE is life and death going on in every- 
thing: truth and lies always at battle. 
Pleasure is always warring against self-re- 
straint. — English Humourists ('Congreve and 
Addison'). 

A DEAR wife and children to love you, 
a true friend or two to stand by you, 
and in health or sickness, . . . a kindly heart. 
— Philip, chap. xlii. 

A MAN who goes overboard hangs on to a 
spar whilst any hope is left, and then 
flings it away and goes down when he fin^ 
that the struggling is in vain, — Vanity Fav^ 
chap. Ixiv. 

WOULD you, who are reading this, for 
example, like to live your life over 
again ? What has been its chief joy ? What 
are to-day's pleasures ? Are they so exquisite 
that you would prolong them forever? 



LIFE 87 

Would you like to have the roast beef on 
which you have dined brought back again to 
the table ? and have more beef, and more, 
and more? Would you like to hear yester- 
day's sermon over and over again — eternally 
voluble? . . . You might as well say you 
would like ... to be thrashed over again 
b3^ your bully at school : you would like to go 
to the dentist's. — Philip, chap. xvii. 

THE great moments of life are but mo- 
ments like the others. Your doom is 
spoken in a word or two. A single look from 
the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand may 
decide it, or of the lips though they cannot 
speak. — Pendennis, chap. Ixxiv. 

TO push on in the crowd, every male and 
female struggler must use his shoulders. 
If a better place than yours presents itself just 
beyond your neighbour, elbow him and take 
it. Look how a steadily purposed man or 
woman at court, at a ball, or exhibition, 
wherever there is a competition and a squeeze, 
gets the best place; the nearest the sovereign, 
if bent on kissing the royal hand; the closest 
the grand-stand if minded to go to Ascot; 
the best view and hearing of the Rev. Mr. 
Thumpington, when all the town is rushing to 
hear that exciting divine; the largest quantity 
of ice, champag.ne, and seltzer, cold pate, or 
other, his or her favourite flesh-pot if glut- 



88 LIFE 

tonously minded, at a supper whence hun- 
dreds of people come empty away. What a 
man has to do in society is to assert himself. 
Is there a good place at the table ? Take it. 
At the Treasury or at the Home Office? 
Ask for it. Do you want to go to a party to 
which you are not invited ? Ask to be asked. 
Ask A. Ask B. Ask Mrs. C, ask everybody 
you know: you will be thought a bore; but you 
will have your way. What matters if you are 
considered obtrusive, provided you obtrude? 
By pushing steadily, nine hundred and ninety- 
nine people in a thousand will yield to you. 
Only command persons, and you may be 
pretty sure that a good number will obey. 
How well your shilling will have been laid out, 
O gentle reader, who purchase this; and tak- 
ing the maxim to heart, follow it through life! 
You may be pretty sure of success. If your 
neighbour's foot obstructs you, stamp on it; 
and do you suppose he won't take it away ? — 
The Newcomes^ chap. viii. 

INDEED, do not things happen under our 
eyes and we not see them ? Are not come- 
dies and tragedies daily performed before us 
of which we understand neither the fun nor 
the pathos. — The Virginians, chap. Ixix. 

IF you make yourself agreeable there you 
will be in a fair way to get on in the world. 
— Sketches and Travels in London. (' A Word 
About Dinners'). 



LOVE 89 

ARE there not little chapters in every- 
body's life that seem to be nothing and 
yet aflfect all the rest of the history? — Vanity 
Fair, chap, vi. 

STINGINESS is snobbish. Ostentation 
is snobbish. Too great profusion is 
snobbish. — The Book of Snobs, chap. xix. 

YOU see a man sink in the race and say 
good-by to him. Look, he has only 
dived and comes up ever so far ahead. Eh, 
vogue la galere ! — Pendennis, chap. xliv. 

LOVE 

YOU who have any who love you cling to 
them and thank God. — Lovel the Wid- 
ower, chap. vi. 

MANY a man and woman have been in- 
censed and worshipped and have 
shown no more feeling than is to be expected 
from idols. — The Newcomes, chap. xxi. 



w 



HO can love without an anxious 
heart ? — Burlesques. 



SURE, love vincit omnia, is immeasurably 
above all ambition, more precious than 
wealth, more noble than name. He knows 
not life who knows not that : he hath not felt 



90 



LOVE 



the highest facuhy of the soul who hath not 
enjoyed it. . . . To have such a love is 
the one blessing, in comparison of which all 
earthly joy is of no value. — Esmond, chap, 
xiii, bk. iii. 

SOME cynical Frenchman has said that 
there are two parties to a love transac- 
tion: the one who loves and the other who 
condescends to be so treated. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. xiii. 

TRUE love is better than glory, and a tran- 
quil fireside with the woman of your 
heart seated by it, the greatest good the 
gods can send us. — The Virginians, chap. 



A WOMAN who loves a man will not 
ruin his prospects, cause him to quar- 
rel with his family, and lead him into 
misery for her gratification. — Pendennis, 
chap. li. 

ONLY true love lives after you, follows 
your memory with secret blessing, or 
precedes you, and intercedes for you. Non 
omnis moriar — if dying, I yet live in a ten- 
der heart or two; nor am lost and hope- 
less living, if a sainted departed soul still 
loves and prays for me. — Esmond, chap, vi, 
bk. ii. 



LOVE 91 

IF the sight of youthful love is pleasant to 
behold, how much more charming the 
aspect of the afifection that has survived 
years, sorrows, . . . and life's doubts, differ- 
ences, trouble! — The Virginians, chap, xxxiii. 

BLESSED he — blessed, though maybe, 
undeserving — who has the love of a good 
woman. — The Newcomes, chap. xlix. 

HOWEVER, there is another subject, la- 
dies, on which I must discourse, and 
that is never out of place. Day and night 
you like to hear of it: young and old, you 
dream and think of it. Handsome and ugly, 
. . . it's the subject next to the hearts of 
all of you. . . . Love! sure the word is 
formed on purpose out of the prettiest soft 
vowels and consonants in the language, and 
he or she who does not care to read about 
it is not worth a fig. — Barry Lyndon, chap. i. 

NOT in vain — not in vain, has he lived — 
hard and thankless should he be to 
think so — that has such a treasure given 
him. What is ambition compared to that, 
but selfish vanity. — Esmond, chap, vi, bk. ii. 

WHO likes a man best because he is the 
cleverest or the wisest of .mankind; 
or a woman because she . . . plays the 
piano better than the rest of her sex? — En- 
glish Humourists ('Steele'). 



92 



LOVE 



IN the Morning of Life the Truthful wooed 
the Beautiful, and their offspring was 
Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. 
He has his Mother's ravishing smile, his 
Father's steadfast eyes. He rises every day, 
fresh and glorious as the untried Sun-God. 
He is Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were 
this world of ours had either Divinity left it — 
dark without the day-beams of the Latonian 
Charioteer, darker yet without the daedal 
Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost 
know him, reader ? 

Old is he, Eros the ever young. He and 
Time were children together. Chronos shall 
die too, but Love is imperishable. Brightest 
of the Divinities, where hast thou not been 
sung? Other worships pass away, the idols 
of whom pyramids were raised lie in the 
desert crumbling and almost nameless. The 
Olympians are fled, their fanes no longer 
rise among the quivering olive-groves of 
Ilissus, or crown the emerald-islets of the 
amethyst ^gean! These are gone, but thou 
remainest. There is still a garland for thy 
temple, a heifer for thy stone. A heifer? 
Ah, many a darker sacrifice. Other blood is 
shed at thy altars, Remorseless One, and the 
Poet Priest who ministers at thy Shrine 
draws his auguries from the bleeding hearts 
of men! — Prize Novels ('George de Barn- 
well,' chap. i.). 



LOVE 93 

LOVE is the master of the wisest. — It is 
only fools who defy him. — Men's Wives 
('Dennis Haggerty's Wife')- 

AH! I have no patience with the way in 
which you people of the world treat the 
most sacred of subjects — the most sacred. Is 
a woman's love to be pledged and withdrawn 
every day? Only to be a matter of barter, 
and rank, and social consideration ? — Philip, 
chap. viii. 

HAPPY it is to love when one is hopeful, 
and young in the midst of smiles and 
sunshine, but be wwhappy and then see what 
it is to be loved by a good woman. — The 
Great Hoggarty Diamond, chap. xi. 

LOVE is a mighty fine thing, but it is not 
the life of a man. There are a thousand 
other things for him to think of besides. 
There is business, there is friendship, there is 
society, there are taxes, there is ambition, and 
the manly desire to exercise the talents which 
are given us by heaven, and reap the prize 
of our desert.— ^^e^cAe^ and Travels in Londofi. 
('On Love, Marriage, Men and Women.') 

THERE are some people who, in their 
youth, have felt and inspired an heroic 
passion, and end by being happy in the ca- 
resses or agitated by the illness of a poodle. — 
Pendennis, chap, xlviii. 



94 LOVE 

ALL the prizes of life are nothing com- 
pared to that one. All the rewards of 
ambition, wealth, pleasure, only vanity and 
disappointment — grasped at greedily, and 
fought for fiercely, and over and over again, 
found worthless by the weary winners. But 
love seems to survive life, and to reach be- 
yond it. I think we take it with us past the 
grave. Do we not still give it to those who 
have left us? May we not hope that they 
feel it for us and that we shall leave it here in 
one or two fond bosoms, when we also are 
gone? — The Virginians, chap. xxi. 

PERHAPS all early love affairs ought to 
be strangled or drowned like so many 
blind kittens. — Pendennis, chap. ii. 

IF Fun is good. Truth is still better, and 
Love best of all. — Book of Snobs, chap. xlii. 

AH, friends and tortures! a gentleman 
may cease to love but does he like a wo- 
man to cease to love him ? — Philip, chap. xiii. 

NOT in vain, not in vain does he live 
whose course is so befriended. Let us 
be thankful for our race, as we think of the 
love that blesses some of us. Surely it has 
something of Heaven in it, and angels celes- 
tial may rejoice in it and admire it. — The 
Newcomes, chap. xv. 



LOVE 



95 



IF you love a person, is it not a pleasure to 
feel obliged to him? — The Great Hog- 
garty Diamond. 

ALONG engagement is a partnership 
which one party is free to keep or to 
break, but which involves all the capital of 
the other. Be cautious, then, young ladies, 
be wary how you engage. — Vanity Fair, 
chap, xviii. 

1DARE say all people's love-making is not 
amusing to their neighbours. — Philip, 
chap. xvii. 

FOR love, as for the greatest of all the 
bounties and wonders of God's provision 
for us, let us kneel and thank Our Father. — 
Pendennis, chap. Ivii. 

FOR a while at least, I think almost every 
man or woman is interesting when in 
love. — The Newcomes, chap. xli. 

WHAT is it? where lies it? the secret 
which makes one little hand the dear- 
est of all. — Esmond, chap, vi, bk. ii. 

SOME people have the complaint so mildly 
that they are scarcely ever kept to their 
beds. Some bear its scars forever. — Philip, 
chap. xiv. 



96 MARRIAGE 

WHEN a man is in love with one woman 
in a family, it is astonishing how 
fond he becomes of every person connected 
with it. He ingratiates himself with the 
maids; he is bland with the butler; he inter- 
ests himself about the footman; he runs on 
errands for the daughters; he gives advice 
and lends money to the young son at college; 
he pats little dogs which he would kick other- 
wise; ... he smiles when wicked, lively, 
little Bobby upsets the coffee over his shirt. 
— The Virginians, chap. xx. 

TO see a young couple loving each other 
is no wonder; but to see an old couple 
loving each other is the best sight of all. — 
Esmond, chap, xi, bk. i. 

AS the gambler said of his dice, to love 
and win is the best thing. To love and 
lose is the next best. — Pendennis, chap, xxxix. 

yJFFAIRES de cceur — the best way — when 
■^ a danger of that sort menaces, is not to 
face it, but to turn one's back on it and run. 
— Pendennis, chap. liv. 



MARRIAGE 



w 



^ARM friendship and thorough esteem 
and confidence are safe properties in- 
vested in the prudent marriage stock, mul- 
tiplying and bearing an increasing value with 
every year. — The Newcomes, chap, xxxvii. 



MARRIAGE 97 

BETTER poverty, better a cell in a con- 
vent, than a union without love. — The 
Newcomes, chap, xlvii. 

WHO dared first to say that marriages 
are made in heaven? Do not mis- 
takes occur every day? and are not the 
wrong people coupled? You may as well 
say that horses are sold in heaven. — Philip, 
chap. XX. 

I HAVE never learned that life's trials were 
over after marriage; only lucky is he who 
has a loving companion to share them. — 
Philip, chap, xxxii. 

QUE vouleZ'Vous? There are some 
women in the world to whom love and 
truth are all in all here below. Other ladies 
there are who see the benefit of a good 
jointure, a town and country house and so 
forth, and who are not so very particular as 
to the character, intellect, or complexion of 
the gentlemen who are in a position to offer 
these benefits. — Philip, chap. xiii. 

AND as for this romance of love, . . . 
this fine picture of Jenny and Jessamy 
falling in love . . . and retiring to a cot- 
tage afterward, . . . pshaw! what folly is 
this! I don't say that a young man and 
woman are not to meet, and fall in love and 
to marry, and love each other till they are a 



98 MARRIAGE 

hundred; that is the supreme lot, but that is 
the lot which the gods only grant to a very, 
very few. As for the rest, they must com- 
promise; make themselves as comfortable as 
they can, and take the good and the bad to- 
gether. . . . Love in a cottage! Who is to 
pay the landlord for the cottage? . . . No, 
you cry out against people in our world 
making money marriages. Why, kings and 
queens marry on the same understanding. 
A girl accepts the best parti which offers 
itself. — The Newcomes, chap. xxx. 

AND so the words are spoken and the 
knot is tied. Amen. For better, for 
worse, for good days or evil, love each other, 
cling to each other, dear friends. Fulfil your 
course and accomplish your life's toil. In 
sorrow soothe each other; in illness watch 
and tend. Cheer, fond wife, the husband's 
struggle, lighten his gloomy hours with your 
tender smiles, and gladden his home with 
your love. — Philip, chap, xxxii. 

WHEN one thinks of country houses and 
country walks, one wonders that any 
man is left unmarried. — Pendennis, chap. Ixiii. 

AND, in a word, as you are what is called 
a gentleman, yourself, I hope that Mrs. 
Bob Brown, whoever she may be, is not only 
by nature, but by education, a gentlewoman. 



MARRIAGE 99 

No man ought ever to be called upon to 
blush for his wife. I see good men rush into 
marriage with ladies of whom they are after- 
ward ashamed, and in the same manner 
charming women linked to partners whose 
vulgarity they try to screen. ... So you see 
Edward Jones has had his way and got a 
wife, but at what expense ? He and his fam- 
ily are separated. His wife brought him 
nothing but good looks. . . . Her stock of 
brains is small. She is not easy in the new 
society into which she has been brought and 
sits quite mum. . . . The women try her 
in every way, and can get no good from her. 
Jones's male friends, who are civilized beings, 
talk to her, and receive only monosyllables 
in reply. His house is a stupid one, his ac- 
quaintances drop ofif; he has no circle at all 
at last. . . . What is the lot of a man who 
has a wife like this? . . . She never had 
any merit. He can't read novels to her all 
through his life, while she is working slippers. 
It is absurd. ... He is a young man 
still when she is an old woman. She ought 
to be able to make your house pleasant to 
your friends. She ought to attract them to it 
by her grace, her good-breeding, her good- 
humour. — Sketches and Travels in London. 
('On Love, Marriage, Men and Women'). 



loo MARRIAGE 

ARRIVED at my time of life, when I see 
a young friend . . . thinking of com- 
mitting matrimony, what can I do but be 
melancholy? Gracious powers! is it not 
blasphemy? ... A wife whom you have 
met a score of times at balls or break- 
fasts, and with her best dresses and be- 
haviour, . . . how do you know how she 
will turn out ? What her relations are likely 
to be? Suppose she has poor relations or 
loud, coarse brothers who are always drop- 
ping in to dinner ? What is her mother like ? 
and can you bear to have that woman med- 
dling and domineering over your establish- 
ment? ... As a man of the world I saw 
all these dreadful liabilities impending over 
the husband . . . and could not view them 
without horror. — Philip, chap. xvii. 

WHAT was it that insulted Nature (to 
use no higher name) and perverted 
her kindly intentions toward them? What 
cursed frost was it that nipped the love that 
both were bearing, . . . and condemned the 
lad to selfish old bachelorhood ? It was the 
infernal Snob tyrant who governs us all, who 
says, 'Thou shalt not love without a lady's- 
maid, thou shalt not marry without a carriage 
and horses, thou shalt have no wife on thy 
heart, . . . without a page in buttons and 
a French bonne; thou shalt go to the devil un- 
less thou hast a brougham, marry poor and 



MARRIAGE loi 

society shall forsake thee, thy kinsmen shall 
avoid thee as a criminal, . . .' and be- 
moan the sad, sad manner in which Tom or 
Harry has thrown himself away. You, young 
woman, may sell yourself without shame and 
marry old Croesus, you young man may lie 
away your heart and your life for a jointure. 
But if you are poor, woe be to you. Society 
the brutal Snob autocrat consigns you to soli- 
tary perdition. Wither, poor girl, in your gar- 
ret .. . young man in your club. — Book 
of Snobs ^ chap, xxxiii. 

WE know that there are not only blunders, 
but roguery in the marriage office. 
. . . Had heaven anything to do with the 
bargain by which young Miss Blushrose was 
sold to old Mr. Hoarfrost ? Did heaven order 
Miss Tripper to throw over poor Tom Spooner, 
and marry the wealthy Mr. Bung? . . . 
You have been jockeyed by false representa- 
tions into bidding for the Cecilia, . . . She 
shies, kicks, stumbles, has an infernal temper, 
is a crib-biter. . . . You have bought 
her. . . . Heaven bless you. Take her 
home and be miserable. . . . Marriages 
were made in heaven, you know; and in yours 
you were as much sold as Moses Primrose was 
when he bought the gross of green spectacles. 
— Philip, chap. xx. 



I02 MARRIAGE 

THIS ceremony amongst us is so staie and 
common that, to be sure, there is no 
need to describe its rites, and as women sell 
themselves for what you call an establishment 
every day, to the applause of themselves, their 
parents and the world, why on earth should 
a man ape originality and pretend to pity 
them? Never mind about the lies at the 
altar, the blasphemy against the godlike 
name of love. What the deuce does a mar- 
iage de convenance mean but all this! — The 
Newcomes, chap, xxviii. 

I CAN fancy nothing more cruel, after a long, 
easy life of bachelorhood, than to have to 
sit day after day, with a dull . . . woman 
opposite, to have to answer her speeches 
about the weather, housekeeping, and what 
not, to smile appropriately when she is disposed 
to be lively, . . . and to model your con- 
versation so as to suit her intelligence, know- 
ing that a word used out of its downright sig- 
nification will not be understood by your 
breakfast-maker. — The Newcomes, chap. xl. 

MARRIAGES begun in indifference 
make homes unhappy. — The New- 
comes, chap. Iv. 

WE arrange such matches every day, we 
sell or buy beauty, or rank or wealth; 
we inaugurate the bargain in churches with 
sacramental services, in which the parties 



MARRIAGE 103 

engaged call upon Heaven to witness their 
vows — we know them to be lies, and seal them 
in God's name. — The Newcomes, chap. Ivii. 

WHAT causes young people to 'come 
out ' but the noble ambition of matri- 
mony? What sends . . . them ... to 
watering-places? ... to play the harp if 
they have handsome arms . . . but that they 
may bring down some . . . 'desirable' 
young man with those killing bows and 
arrows of theirs? What causes respectable 
parents to take up their carpets, set their 
houses topsy-turvy, and spend a fifth of their 
year's income in ball suppers, and iced cham- 
pagne ? Is it sheer love of their species and 
an unadulterated wish to see young people 
happy and dancing? Pshaw, they want to 
marry their daughters. — Vanity Fair, chap. iii. 



o 



F what else have young ladies to think 
but husbands? — Vanity Fair, chap. x. 



THE great point in marriage is for people 
to be useful to one another. — Pendennis, 
chap. lix. 

IT isn't money or mere liking a girl that 
ought to be enough to make a fellow 
marry. He may marry and find he likes 
somebody else better. All the money in the 
world won't make you happy then. — Pen- 
dennis, chap. xlv. 



I04 MEN 

AH, Othello, mon ami, when you look 
round at married life, and know what 
you know, don't you wonder that the bolster 
is not used a great deal more freely ? — Philip, 
chap, xxviii. 

MEN 

HE could despise a man for not being a 
gentleman and insult him for being one. 
I have met with people in the world with 
whom the latter offence is an unpardonable 
crime — a cause of ceaseless doubt, division 
and suspicion. What more common or nat- 
ural than to hate another for being what you 
are not? The story is as old as frogs, bulls 
and men. Then, to be sure, besides your 
enviers in life there are your admirers. — 
Philip, chap. vi. 

WHAT qualities are there for which a 
man gets so speedy a return of ap- 
plause as those of bodily superiority, activity, 
and valour ? Time out of mind, strength and 
courage have been the theme of bards and 
romances; and from the story of Troy down 
to to-day, poetry has always chosen a soldier 
for a hero. I wonder is it because men are 
cowards in heart that they admire bravery so 
much, and place military valour so far be- 
yond every other quality for reward and 
worship? — Vanity Fair, chap. xxx. 



MEN 105 

WHAT is it to be a gentleman ? Is it to 
be honest, to be gentle, to be gener- 
ous, to be brave, to be wise, and possessing 
all these qualities to exercise them in the 
most graceful outward manner? — Book of 
Snobs, chap. ii. 

THERE is no character which a low- 
minded man so much mistrusts as that 
of a gentleman. — Vanity Fair, chap. xxi. 

MEN serve women kneeling — when they 
get on their feet, they go away. — 
Pendennis, chap. xxx. 

CERTAIN men there are who never tell 
their love, but let concealment, like a 
worm in the bud, feed on their damask cheek; 
others again must be not always thinking but 
talking about the darling object. — The New- 
comes, chap. xlv. 

THE world is full of fellows who will 
never give another man credit. — Philip, 
chap. ix. 

HAVE you not remarked in your dealings 
with people who are no gentlemen, that 
you offend them not knowing the how or 
why? So the man who is no gentleman 
offends you in a thousand ways of which the 



io6 MEN 

poor creature has no idea himself. He does 
or says something which provokes your scorn, 
he perceives that scorn (being always on the 
watch and uneasy about himself, his man- 
ners and behaviour) and he rages. You 
speak to him naturally, and he fancies still 
that you are sneering at him. You have in- 
difference toward him; but he hates you and 
hates you the worse because you don't care. 
— The Virginians, chap, xlvii. 

MEN young to the world mistrust the 
bearing of others toward them, because 
they mistrust themselves. — Sketches and 
Travels in London. (' On the Pleasures of 
Being a Fogy')- 

WHICH of us can point out many such 
in his circle — men whose aims are 
generous, whose truth is constant, and not 
only constant in its kind, but elevated in its 
degree; whose want of meanness makes 
them simple : who can look the world honestly 
in the face with an equal manly sympathy 
for the great and the small ? We all know a 
hundred whose coats are very well made, 
and a score who have excellent manners, 
but of gentlemen, how many? Let us take 
a little scrap of paper and each make out his 
list. — Vanity Fair, chap. Ixii. 



MEN 107 

THERE are certain actions simple and 
common with some men, which others 
cannot understand, and deny as utter Hes, or 
deride as acts of madness. — Tlie Virginians, 
chap. Ixxii. 

THERE is no man or woman in our time 
who makes fine projects and gives them 
up from idleness or want of means. . . . 
WTien we are stricken with remorse and prom- 
ise reform, we keep our promise, and are 
never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. 
. . . There are no little sins, shabby pec- 
cadilloes, importunate remembrances, . . . 
hovering at our steps, or knocking at our 
door! Of course not. We are living in the 
nineteenth century. — English Humourists 
('Steele'). 

GREAT men recite their great actions 
modestly, as if they were matters of 
course; as, indeed, to them they are. A com- 
mon tyro having perpetrated a great deed, 
would be amazed and flurried at his own 
action; whereas I have no doubt the Duke of 
Wellington, after a great victory, took his tea 
and went to bed just as quietly as he would 
after a dull debate in the House of Lords. — 
Irish Sketch Book, chap. xv. 



io8 MEN 

BEWARE of too much talk, O parsons. 
If a man is to give an account of every 
idle word he utters, for what a number of 
such loud nothings, windy emphatic tropes and 
metaphors, spoken not for God's glory, but 
the preacher's, will many a cushion-thumper 
have to answer. — Irish Sketch Book, chap. xx. 

WE can apply the Snob test to him — 
and try whether he is conceited . . . 
. . and proud of his own narrow soul. How 
does he treat a great man ? how regard a 
small one ? — Book of Snobs, chap. last. 

HOW low men were, and how they rise, 
How high they were and how they 
tumble, 
O vanity of vanities! 

O laughable, pathetic jumble. . . . 
O vanity of vanities! 

How wayward the decrees of Fate are, 
How very weak the very wise, 

How very small the very great are. 

— Vanitas Vanitatum. 

IT is only a few men who attain simplicity 
in early life. This man has his conceited 
self-importance to be cured of, that has his 
conceited bashfulness to be 'taken out of him* 
as the phrase is. You have a disquiet which 
you try to hide, and you put on a haughty 
and guarded manner. You are suspicious of 



MEN 109 

the good will of the company round about 
you, or of the estimation in which they hold 
you. You sit mum at the table. It is not 
your place to 'put yourself forward.' You 
are thinking about yourself, that is, you are 
not agreeable. . . . When Mumford is an 
honest Fogy, ... he will neither distrust 
his host nor his company, nor himself, he 
will make the best of the hour and the peo- 
ple round about him; ... he will take and 
give his part of the good things, join in the 
talk and laugh unaffectedly, . . . not from 
a wish to show oflf his powers, but from a 
sheer good humour and desire to oblige. — 
Sketches and Travels in London. ('On the 
Pleasures of Being a Fogy'). 

A CLEVER, ugly man every now and 
then is successful with the ladies; but 
a handsome fool is irresistible. — Catherine, 
chap. X. 

MAN is a Drama — of Wonder and Pas- 
sion, and Mystery and Meanness, and 
Beauty and Truthfulness, and Et cetera. 
Each Bosom is a Booth in Vanity Fair. — 
Book of Snobs, chap, xxxix. 

WHO has not heard how great, strong 
men, have an aflanity for tender, little 
women; how tender, little women are at- 
tracted by great, strong men? — The Virgin- 
ians, chap. Ixii. 



no MEN 

MEN not so wise as Socrates have their 
demons, who will be heard to whisper 
in the queerest times and places. — Philip, 
chap. xvii. 

BECAUSE people are rich they are not of 
necessity ogres. Because they are born 
gentlemen and ladies of good degree, are in 
easy circumstances, and have a generous 
education, it does not follow that they are 
heartless and will turn their back on a friend. 
Moi qui vous parte — I have been in a great 
strait of sickness, near to death, and the friends 
who came to help me with every comfort, 
succour, sympathy, were actually gentlemen 
who lived in good houses and had a good 
education. They didn't turn away because 
I was sick or fly from me because they thought 
I was poor; on the contrary, hand, purse, 
succour, sympathy were ready, and praise be 
to Heaven. — Philip, chap, xxxvi. 

A MAN will lay down his head, or peril 
his life for his honour, but let us be shy 
how we ask him to give up his ease or his 
heart's desire. Very few of us can bear that 
trial. — Peiidennis, chap, xviii. 

LONG custom, a manly appearance, 
faultless boots and clothes, and a happy 
fierceness of manner, will often help a man 
as much as a great balance at the banker's. 
— Vanity Fair, chap. xii. 



MEN III 

SURE every man was made to do some 
work; and a gentleman, if he has none, 
must make some. Honour is the aim of Hfe. 
Every man can serve his country one way or 
the other. — The Virginians, chap, xxviii. 

I OBSERVE that men who complain of its 
selfishness are quite as selfish as the 
world is. — Men's Wives ('The Ravenswing,' 
rhap. v.). 

HALF the men are sick with the feasts 
which they eat day after day. — The 
Newcomes, chap. x. 

SAMSON was a mighty man, but he was 
a fool in the hands of a woman. Her- 
cules was a brave man and a strong, but 
Omphale twisted him round her spindle. — 
Philip, chap, xxvii. 

I HAVE seen the bravest men in the army 
cry like children at the cut of a cane. I 
have seen a little ensign of fifteen call out a 
man of fifty from the ranks, a man who had 
been in a hundred battles and he has stood pre- 
senting arms, and sobbing and howling like a 
baby, while the young wretch lashed him over 
the arms and thighs with the stick. In a day of 
action this man would dare anything. . . . 
But when they had made the brute fight, then 
they lashed him again into insubordination. 
. . . The French ofl&cer I have spoken of as 
taken along with me, was . . . caned like a 



112 MEN 

dog. I met him at Versailles twenty years 
afterward, and he turned quite pale and sick 
when I spoke to him of the old days. 'For 
God's sake,' said he, 'don't talk of that time. 
I wake up from my sleep trembling and cry- 
ing even now.' — Barry Lyndon, chap. vi. 

THE bravest man I ever knew in the army, 
and who had been present in King Wil- 
liam's actions, . . . could never be got 
to tell us of any achievement of his, except 
that once Prince Eugene ordered him up a 
tree to reconnoitre the enemy, which feat he 
could not achieve on account of the horseman's 
boots he wore; and on another day he was very 
nearly taken prisoner because of these jack- 
boots, which prevented him from running 
away. — Esmond, chap, v, bk. ii. 

A MAN is seldom more manly than when 
he is what you call unmanned — the 
source of his emotion is championship, pity 
and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish 
those who are innocent and unhappy, and 
defend those who are tender and weak. — 
English Humourists ('Steele'). 

NO man is worth a fig or can have real 
benevolence of character, or observe 
mankind properly, who does not like the so- 
ciety of modest and well-bred women. — 
Sketches and Travels in London (' On Tail- 
oring and Toilettes in General'). 



MEN 113 

1HOPE I shall always like to hear men in 
reason talk about themselves. What 
subject does a man know better? — Rounda- 
bout Papers ('On Two Children in Black'). 

I WILL assume, my benevolent friend and 
present reader, that you yourself are virt- 
uous, not from a fear of punishment, but 
from a sheer love of good; but as you and I 
walk through life, consider what hundreds of 
thousands of rascals we must have met who 
have not been found out at all. — Roundabout 
Papers ('On a Pear-tree'). 

FEW men of kindly feeling and good sta- 
tion are without a dependent or two. 
Men start together in the race of life, and 
Jack wins and Tom falls by his side. The 
successful man succours and reaches a 
friendly hand to the unfortunate competitor. 
— Philip, chap. vii. 

ACCUSATIONS of ingratitude, and just 
accusations, no doubt, are made 
against every inhabitant of this wicked world, 
and the fact is that a man who is ceaselessly 
engaged in its trouble and turmoil, borne 
hither and thither upon the fierce waves of 
the crowd, bustling, shifting, struggling to 
keep himself somewhat above water — fight- 
ing for reputation, or more likely for bread, 
and ceaselessly occupied to-day with plans 
for appeasing the eternal appetite of inevita- 



114 MEN 

ble hunger to-morrow — a man in such straits 
has hardly time to think of anything but him- 
self, and, as in a sinking ship, must make his 
own rush for the boats, and fight, struggle 
and trample for safety. . . . The horrible 
glazed eyes of Necessity are always fixed 
upon you; fly away as you will, black Care 
sits behind you. . . . 

Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, 
after the period of his boyhood or first youth, 
makes so few friends. Want and ambition 
(new acquaintances which are introduced to 
him along with his beard) thrust away all 
other society from him. Some old friends 
remain, it is true, but these are become as a 
habit — a part of your selfishness; and for 
new ones, they are selfish as you are. — Criti- 
cal Reviews ('George Cruikshank'). 

A MAN may attribute to the gods, if he 
likes, what is caused by his own fury, 
or disappointment, or self-will. — English 
Humourists ('Swift'). 

WHAT is it to be a gentleman ? Is it to 
have lofty aims? to lead a pure life, 
to keep your honour virgin, to have the es- 
teem of your fellow-citizens, and the love of 
your fireside, to bear good fortune meekly, 
to suffer evil with constancy, and through 
evil or good to maintain truth always. ? — The 
Four Georges ('George IV'). 



MONEY lis 



GRATITUDE among certain rich folks is 
scarcely natural or to be thought of. 
They take needy people's services as their 
due. Nor have you, O poor parasite and 
humble hanger-on, much reason to com- 
plain! Your friendship for Dives is about as 
sincere as the return which it usually gets. 
It is money you love, and not the man, and 
were Croesus and his footman to change 
places, you know, you poor rogue, who would 
have the benefit of your allegiance. — Vanity 
Fair, chap. xiv. 

TO part with money is a sacrifice beyond 
almost all men endowed vnth a sense of 
order. There is scarcely any man alive who 
does not think himself meritorious for giving 
his neighbour five pounds. Thriftless gives, 
not from a beneficent pleasure in giving, but 
from a lazy delight in spending. He would 
not deny himself one enjoyment; not his 
opera-stall, not his horse, not his dinner, not 
even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five 
pounds. Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, 
and owes no man a penny, turns from a beg- 
gar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or 
denies a poor relation, and I doubt which is 
the most selfish of the two. Money has only 
a different value in the eyes of each. — Vanity 
Fair, chap. xliv. 



ii6 MONEY 



WHEN the nature of Mr. Osborne's will 
became known to the world, it was 
edifying to remark how Mrs. George Os- 
borne rose in the estimation of the people 
forming her circle of acquaintance. The ser- 
vants of Jos's establishment, who used to 
question her humble orders, and say they 
would 'ask Master' whether or not they 
could obey, never thought now of that sort 
of an appeal. The cook forgot to sneer at 
her shabby old gowns, . . . and others 
no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, 
or delayed to answer that summons. The 
coachman who grumbled that his 'osses should 
be brought out, . . . drove her with the 
utmost alacrity now, and trembling lest he 
should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's 
coachman. . . . Jos's friends, male and 
female, suddenly became interested about 
Emily, and cards of condolence multiplied on 
her hall table. Jos himself . . . paid her 
and the rich little boy, his nephew, the 
greatest respect — was anxious that she should 
have change and amusement after her troubles 
and trials, * poor, dear girl,* and began to ap- 
pear at the breakfast-table, and most par- 
ticularly to ask how she would like to dis- 
pose of the day. — Vanity Fair, chap. Ixi. 



MONEY 117 

HOW they cringe and bow to that Creole, 
because of her hundred thousand 
pounds. I am a thousand times cleverer 
and more charming than that creature for all 
her wealth. . . . And yet every one passes 
me by here. — Vanity Fair, chap. ii. 

TIT'HAT a dignity it gives an old lady, 
VV that balance at the banker's. . . . 
What a kind, good-natured creature we find 
her. . . . What a good fire there is in her 
room when she comes to pay you a visit. — 
Vanity Fair, chap. ix. 

IT seems to me that all . . . society is 
cursed by this mammoniacal superstition, 
and that we are sneaking and bowing and 
cringing on the one hand, or bullying and 
scorning on the other. — Book of Snobs, chap, 
last. 

THE Baroness, too, was a woman of the 
world, and possibly on occasion could 
be as selfish as any other person of fashion. 
She fully understood the cause of the defer- 
ence which all the . . . family showed to 
her, . . . and being a woman of great 
humour, played upon the dispositions of the 
various members of this family, amused her- 
self with their greediness, their humiliations, 
their artless respect for her money-box and 
clinging attachment to her purse. . . . 



ii8 MONEY 

But those who had money and those who had 
none were alike eager for the Baroness's; in 
this matter the rich are quite as greedy as the 
poor. — The Virginians, chap. ii. 

IT is natural that a man should like the so- 
ciety of people well-to-do in the world, who 
make their houses pleasant, who gather pleas- 
ant persons about them, who have pleasant 
town and country houses. — Sketches and 
Travels in London (' On the Pleasures of Being 
a Fogy'). 

MAGNIFICENCE is the decency of the 
rich. — Sketches and Travels in Lon- 
don ('Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew'). 

IT is wonderful how the possession of 
wealth brings out the virtues of a man; 
or, at any rate, acts as a varnish or lustre to 
them, and brings out their brilliancy and col- 
our in a manner never known when the indi- 
vidual stood in the cold gray atmosphere of 
poverty. — Barry Lyndon, chap. xvii. 

OF what good is money unless we can 
make those we love happy with it ? — 
The Newcomes, chap, xxxix. 

WHO in this life gets the smiles, and the 
acts of friendship, and the pleasing 
legacies ? The rich. And I do for my part, 
heartily wish that some one would leave me 



MOTIVES 119 

a trifle — say twenty thousand pounds — being 
perfectly confident that some one else would 
leave me more; and that I should sink into 
my grave worth a plum, at least. — A Shabby 
Genteel Story, chap. i. 

LOVE is of necessity banished from your 
society when you measure all your 
guests by a money-standard. — Sketches and 
Travels in London. (*On a Lady in an 
Opera Box'). 

ON a beaucoup d'esprit with seventy thou- 
sand pounds. — The Virginians, chap. 
Ixxii. 

MOTIVES 

MEN have all sorts of motives which 
carry them onwards in life, and are 
driven into acts of desperation, or it may be, 
of distinction, from a hundred dififerent causes. 
— Esmond, chap, v, bk. iii. 

/JRE, the motives pure which induce your 
-^ friends to ask you to dinner? . . . 
Does your entertainer want something from 
you? ... Be not too curious about the 
mouth of a gift -horse. After all, a man does 
not intend to insult you by asking you to 
dinner. — Book of Snobs, chap. xix. 



w 



E are glad of an excuse to do what we 
like. — The Newcomes, chap. lix. 



I20 NATURE 

I NEVER could count how many causes 
went to produce any given effect or action 
in a person's life and have been, for my own 
part, many a time quite misled in my own 
case, fancying some grand, some magnani- 
mous reason for an act of which I was 
proud, when, lo, some pert little satirical 
monitor springs up inwardly, upsetting the 
fond humbug which I was cherishing, and 
says, . . . 'Away with this boasting, . . . 
my name is Worldly Prudence, not Self- 
denial. ... I am Laziness, not Generosity.' 
— The Newcomes, chap. v. 

WHEN two motives may actuate a friend, 
we surely may try and believe in the 
good one. — The Newcomes, chap. liv. 

I DOUBT whether the wisest of us know 
what our own motives are, and whether 
some of the actions of which we are the very 
proudest will not surprise us when we trace 
them, as we shall one day, to their source. — 
Pendennis, chap. xxxi. 

NATURE 

IS it not a rare provision of Nature that the 
strong-winged bird can soar to the sun 
and gaze at it, and then come down from 
heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion? — 
The Newcomes, chap. xlvi. 



NATURE 121 

AH, sir — a distinct universe walks about 
under your hat and under mine — all 
things in Nature are different to each — the 
woman we look at has not the same features, 
the dish we eat from not the same taste to the 
one and the other — you and I are but a pair 
of infinite isolations, with some fellow- 
islands a little more or less near to us. — Pen- 
dennis, chap. xvi. 

I SAY it is consolatory to think that, as 
Nature has provided flies for the food of 
fishes, and flowers for bees, so she has created 
fools for rogues, and thus the scheme is con- 
sistent throughout. . . . Wherever shines 
the sun, you are sure to find Folly basking 
in it; and knavery is the shadow at Folly's 
heels. — Character Sketches. (' Captain Rook 
and Mr. Pigeon')- 

AND so it is that Nature makes folks; 
and some love books and tea, and some 
like Burgundy and a gallop across country. — 
The Virginians, chap. xvi. 

SOME are made to scheme and some to 
love. — Vanity Fair, chap. xii. 

SO it is, that what is grand to some person's 
eyes appears grotesque to others; and, 
for certain sceptical persons, that step which 
we have heard of between the sublime and 
the ridiculous is not visible. — The Newcomes, 
chap. XXXV. 



122 NATURE 

IT is surprising how young some people's 
hearts remain when their heads have need 
of a front or a httle hair-dye. — Pendennis, 
chap, xxiii. 

NATURE has written a letter of credit 
upon some men's faces, which is hon- 
oured almost wherever presented. — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. xxi. 

AS Nature made him, so he was. I don't 
think he tried to improve himself much. 
Perhaps few people do. They suppose they 
do. — Philip, chap. xv. 

GENIUS won't transplant from one brain 
to another, or is ruined in the carriage. 
• — Cornhill to Cairo, chap. v. 

BECAUSE an eagle houses on a mountain, 
or soars to the sun, don't you be angry 
with a sparrow that perches on a garret-win- 
dow, or twitters on a twig. — Cornhill to Cairo, 
chap. V. 

FRIENDS and children of our race who 
come after me, in which way will you 
bear your trials? I know one that prays 
God will give you love rather than pride, and 
that the Eye all-seeing shall find you in the 
humble place. Not that we should judge 
proud spirits otherwise than charitably. 'Tis 
Nature hath fashioned some for ambition 



NATURE 123 

and dominion, as it hath formed others for 
obedience and submission. The leopard fol- 
lows his nature as the lamb does and acts 
after leopard law; she can neither help her 
beauty, nor her courage, nor her cruelty; 
nor a single spot of her shining coat; nor the 
shot which brings her down. — Esmond, 
chap, vii, bk. iii. 

WOULD you have all the birds of the 
forest sing one note and fly with one 
feather ? . . . I say that the study and ac- 
knowledgment of the variety amongst men 
especially increases our respect and wonder for 
the Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of 
all these minds, so dififerent and yet so united, 
— meeting in a common adoration, and offer- 
ing up, each according to his degree and 
means of approaching the Divine centre, his 
acknowledgment of praise and worship, each 
singing (to recur to the bird simile) his nat- 
ural song. — Pendennis, chap. Ixi. 

WE can't change dispositions by med- 
dling, and only make hypocrites of our 
children by commanding them over-much. — 
The Virginians, chap. iii. 

YOU cannot alter the nature of men . . . 
by any force of satire; as by laying ever so 
many stripes on a donkey's back, you can't 
turn him into a zebra. — Book of Snobs, chap, 
last. 



124 NATURE 

I THINK women have an instinct of dis- 
simulation; they know by nature how to 
disguise their emotions far better than the 
most consummate male courtiers can do. — 
Esmond, chap, xi, bk. iii. 

IN the matter of gentlemen, . , . pshaw! 
Give us one of Nature's gentlemen, and 
hang your aristocrats. And so, indeed. Na- 
ture does make some gentlemen — a few here 
and there. But Art makes most. Good birth, 
that is, good, handsome, well-formed fathers 
and mothers, nice, cleanly nursery-maids, good 
meals, good physicians, good education, few 
cares, pleasant easy habits of life, and luxu- 
ries not too great or enervating, but only re- 
fining — of course, these going on for a few 
generations — are the best gentlemen-makers 
in the world, and beat Nature hollow.— 
The Second Funeral of Napoleon, chap. iii. 

THERE are a set of emotions about which 
a man had best be shy of talking lightly 
• — and the feelings excited by contemplating 
this vast magnificent, harmonious Nature 
are among these. The view of it inspires a 
delight and ecstasy which is not only hard to 
describe, but which has something secret in 
it that a man should not utter loudly. Hope, 
memory, humility, tender yearnings towards 
dear friends, and inexpressible love and rev- 
erence towards the Power which created the 
infinite universe blazing above eternally, and 



NIGHT 125 

the vast ocean shining and rolling around — 
fill the heart with a solemn, humble happiness. 
. . . This magnificent brightness of Nature! 
But the best thoughts only grow and strengthen 
under it. Heaven shines above, and the 
humbled spirit looks up reverently towards 
that boundless aspect of wisdom and beauty. 
You are at home, and with all at rest there, 
however far away they may be, and through 
the distance the heart broods over them, 
bright and wakeful like yonder peaceful stars 
overhead. — Cornhill to Cairo, chap. i. 



IT is night now: and here is home. Gath- 
ered under the quiet roof, elders and chil- 
dren lie alike at rest. In the midst of a great 
peace and calm, the stars look out from the 
heavens. The silence is peopled with the 
past; sorrowful remorses for sins and short- 
comings, memories of passionate joys and 
griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike 
calm and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look at 
me, that have long ceased to shine. The 
town and the fair landscape sleep under the 
starlight, wreathed in the autumn mists. 
Twinkling among the houses a light keeps 
watch here and there in what may be a sick 
chamber or two. The clock tolls sweetly 
in the silent air. Here is night and rest. — 
Roundabout Papers ('De Juventute'). 



126 POVERTY 

GOOD-NIGHT. Good-night, friends, 
old and young! The night will fall and 
the best friends must part. — Philip, chap. xlii. 

AS you lie in the night awake and think- 
ing of your duties, and the morrow's 
inevitable toil oppressing the busy, weary, 
wakeful brain, . . . the Unseen Ones are 
round about us. Does it not seem as if the 
time were drawing near when it shall be 
given to men to behold them? — Roundabout 
Papers ('The Notch on the Axe'). 



''TpIS not poverty that's the hardest to beat 
A or the least happy lot in life. — Esmond, 
chap, xi, bk. ii. 

A STRUGGLE with poverty is a whole- 
some wrestling-match at three or five 
and twenty. The sinews are young, and are 
braced by the contest. It is upon the aged 
that the battle falls hardly, who are weak- 
ened by failing health and perhaps years of 
prosperity. — Philip, chap. xxii. 

HOW do they manage, ces pauvres gens? 
They eat, they drink, they are clothed, 
they are warmed, they have roofs over their 
heads, and glass in their windows; and some 
of them are as good, happy, and well-bred 
as their neighbours who are ten times as rich. 
— Philip, chap. xxx. 



POVERTY 127 

POVERTY is a bully, if you are afraid of 
her, or truckle to her. Poverty is good- 
natured enough if you meet her like a man. 
— Philip, chap. xix. 

YOU pull a long face, . . . and complain 
of the world's treatment of you. . . . 
Fiddlededee, sir! Everybody has to put up 
with impertinences; and if you get a box 
on the ear now you are poor and cast- 
down, you must say nothing about it, 
bear it with a smile, and if you can, 
revenge it ten years after. Moi qui vous 
parle, sir! do you suppose I have had no 
humble pie to eat? All of us in our turn 
are called upon to swallow it; and now you 
are no longer the Fortunate Youth, be the 
Clever Youth and win back the place you 
have lost by your ill luck. Go about more 
than ever. Go to all the routs and parties to 
which you are asked and to more still. Be 
civil to everybody. , . . Only take care to 
show your spirit. — The Virginians, chap. lix. 

WELL? Have others not had to toil, to 
bow the proud head, and carry the 
daily burden? Don't you see Pegasus, who 
was going to win the plate, a weary, broken- 
kneed, broken-down old cab-hack shivering 
in the rank; or a sleek gelding, mayhap, 
pacing under a corpulent master in Rotten 
Row? ... I do not think men who have 



128 POVERTY 

undergone the struggle, served the dire task- 
master, Hke to look back and recall the grim 
apprenticeship. — Philip, chap.xxxiv. 

THERE are actions and events in its life 
over which decent Poverty often chooses 
to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We 
can all, if we are minded, peer through this 
poor flimsy screen: often there is no shame 
behind it, only empty platters, poor scraps, 
and other threadbare evidence of want and 
cold. And who is called to show his rags to 
the public, and cry out his hunger in the 
street ? — Lovel the Widower^ chap. i. 

NO one knows until he tries (which God 
forbid he should), upon what a small 
matter hope and life can be supported. — 
Character Sketches. (' The Artists ') . 

PREJUDICE against the great is only a 
rude expression of sympathy with the 
poor. — Paris Sketch Book. ('French Dramas 
and Melodramas')- 

IT does not follow that all men are honest 
because they are poor, and I have known 
some who were friendly and generous al- 
though they had plenty of money. — The 
Newcomes, chap. i. 



PRAISE 129 

IF the gracious reader has had losses in life, 
losses not so bad as to cause absolute 
want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily 
injury of starvation, let him confess that the 
evils of this poverty are by no means so great 
as his timorous fancy depicted. — The New- 
comes, chap. ix. 

A PAUPER child in London at seven years 
old knows how to go to market, to fetch 
the beer, ... to choose the largest fried fish, 
or the nicest ham-bone, ... to conduct a 
hundred operations of trade or housekeeping, 
which a little Belgravian does not, perhaps, 
acquire in all the days of her life. Poverty and 
necessity force this precociousness on the poor 
little brat. — The Newcomes, chap. liii. 

WHENE'ER you take your walks abroad 
how many poor you meet — if a phil- 
anthropist were for rescuing all of them, not 
all the wealth of all the provinces of America 
would sufl&ce him. — The Virginians, chap, 
xlix. 

PRAISE, ADMIRATION, FLATTERY 

DON'T you know, sir, that a man of 
genius is pleased to have his genius rec- 
ognized; that a beauty likes to be admired, 
that an actor likes to be applauded; that 
Wellington himself was pleased and smiled 
when the people cheered him as he passed ? — 
Roundabout Papers ('A Mississippi Bubble'). 



I30 PRAISE 

WHAT is the dearest praise of all to a 
man? his own, or that you should 
love those whom he loves ? — The Newcomes, 
chap. Ixxiv. 

IT is a wonder what human nature will 
support: and that considering the amount 
of flattery some people are crammed with 
from their cradles, they do not grow worse 
and more selfish than they are. — The New- 
comes, chap. liii. 

FLATTERY is their nature— to coax, 
flatter, and sweetly befool some one is 
every woman's business. She is none if she 
declines this office. — The Newcomes, chap. xl. 

PRAISE everybody, I say, . . . never be 
squeamish, but speak out your compli- 
ment both point-blank in a man's face, and 
behind his back, when you know there is a 
reasonable chance of his hearing it again. 
Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. 
... An acorn costs nothing; but it may 
sprout into a prodigious bit of timber. — Vanity 
Fair, chap. xix. 

NOTHING so provokes my anger and 
rouses my sense of justice as to hear 
other men undeservedly praised. . . . You 
tell me that the Venus de Medici is beauti- 
ful. . . . Qtie diablel Can't I judge for 



PRAISE 131 

myself ? I don't think the Venus is so hand- 
some since you press me; she has no ex- 
pression. — Roundabout Papers ('Autour De 
Mon Chapeau'). 



HOW is it that we allow ourselves not to 
be deceived, but to be ingratiated so 
readily by a glib tongue, a ready laugh, and 
a frank manner? We know, for the most 
part, that it is false coin, and we take it: we 
know that it is flattery, which it costs nothing 
to distribute to everybody, and we had 
rather have it than be without it. — Pendennis, 
chap. Ixv. 



H 



E who meanly admires mean things is 
a Snob. — Book of Snobs, chap. ii. 



THIS should be the maxim with prosper- 
ous persons who have had to make their 
way, and wish to keep what they have made. 
They praise everybody, and are called good- 
natured, benevolent men. Surely no benev- 
olence is so easy; it simply consists in lying 
and smiling, and wishing ever}^body well. 
You will get to do so quite naturally at last, 
and at no expense of truth. At first, when a 
man has feelings of his o-^ti — feelings of love, 
or of anger, this perpetual grin and good- 
humour is hard to maintain. — Character 
Sketches. ('The Artists'). 



132 PRAISE 

VERY few people do like strangers to 
whom they are presented with an out- 
rageous flourish of praises on the part of the 
introducer. You say (quite naturally), What! 
Is this all? Are these the people he is so 
fond of ? — The Virginians, chap. xxi. 

YOU would like admiration ? Consider the 
tax you pay for it. You would be alone 
were you eminent. Were you so distin- 
guished from your neighbours . . . by a great 
and remarkable intellectual superiority — 
would you, do you think, be any the happier ? 
Consider envy. Consider solitude. . . . Ah! 
. . . To be good, to be simple, to be modest, 
to be loved, be thy lot. Be thankful thou art 
not stronger, nor richer, nor wiser, than the 
rest of the world! — Roundabout Papers ('A 
Mississippi Bubble'). 

I SEE, for instance, old Fawney stealing 
round the rooms . . . with glassy, mean- 
ingless eyes, and an endless, greasy simper — 
he fawns on everybody he meets, and shakes 
hands with you, and blesses you, and be- 
trays the most tender and astonishing inter- 
est in your welfare. You know him to be a 
rogue, , . . and he knows you know it. But 
he wriggles on his way, and leaves a track of 
slimy flattery after him wherever he goes. . . . 
You don't know what is lurking under that 
leering tranquil mask. You have only the 



PROSPERITY 133 

dim instinctive repulsion that warns you 
you are in the presence of a knave — beyond 
which fact all Fawney's soul is a secret to 
you. — Book of Snobs, chap, xxxix. 

MIGHT I give counsel to any young 
reader, I would say to him, Try to 
frequent the company of your betters. In 
books and in life that is the most wholesome 
society; learn to admire rightly, the great 
pleasure of life is that. Note what the great 
men admired; they admired great things, 
narrow spirits admire basely, and worship 
meanly. — English Humourists ('Prior, Gay 
and Pope'). 

PROSPERITY 

THERE are people upon whom rank and 
worldly goods make such an impression 
that they naturally fall down on their knees 
and worship the owners; there are others to 
whom the sight of prosperity is offensive, and 
who never see Dives' chariot but to growl 
and hoot at it. He, as far as my humble ex- 
perience would lead me to suppose, is not 
only envious but proud of his envy. He mis- 
takes it for honesty and public spirit. — The 
Newco7nes, chap. v. 

YOU see he was full of kindness; he kin- 
dled and warmed v^dth prosperity. 
There are men on whom wealth hath no such 



134 PROSPERITY 

fortunate influence. It hardens base hearts: 
it makes those who were mean and servile, 
mean and proud. — The Virginians, chap, 
xliii. 



SO many brave and good men fail, so many 
quacks and impostors succeed. Do you 
think the prizes of life are carried by the 
most deserving? and set up that mean test 
of prosperity for merit? — Pendennis, chap. 
Ixxii. 

THE hidden and awful Wisdom which ap- 
portions the destinies of mankind is 
pleased so to humiliate and cast down the 
tender, and good and wise; and to set up the 
selfish, the foolish, or the wicked! Oh, be 
humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be 
gentle with those who are less lucky, if not 
more deserving. — Vanity Fair, chap. Ivii. 

THERE are some natures . . . which are 
improved and softened by prosperity and 
kindness, as there are men of other disposi- 
tions who become arrogant and graceless 
under good fortune. Happy he who can en- 
dure one or the other with modesty and 
good-humour. — Pendennis, chap. xli. 

TT^EW men's life-voyages are destined to be 
"■■ all prosperous. — Esmond, chap, vii, bk. i. 



QUARRELS 135 



QUARRELS 

WE are always for implicating heaven in 
our quarrels, and causing thegods to 
intervene whatever the nodus may be. — The 
Virginians, chap. Ixxiv. 

A PERSON always ready to fight is cer- 
tain of the greatest consideration 
amongst his or her family circle. The lazy 
grow tired of contending with him; the timid 
coax and flatter him; and as almost everyone 
is timid or lazy, a bad-tempered man is sure 
to have his own way. It is he who com- 
mands, and all the others obey. If he is a 
gourmand, he has what he likes for dinner, 
and the tastes of all the rest are subservient 
to his. She (we playfully transfer the gender 
as a bad temper is of both sexes), has the 
place which she likes best in the drawing- 
room. . . . If the family are taking their tour 
in the summer, it is she who ordains whither 
they shall go and when they shall stop. If he 
is in a good humour, how everyone frisks 
about and is happy! How the servants jump 
up at his bell and run to wait upon him! 
Whereas for you and me, who have the tem- 
pers of angels, and never were known to be 
angry or to complain, nobody cares whether we 
are pleased or not. . . . John finishes reading 
the newspaper before he answers our bell 



136 QUARRELS 

and brings it to us; our sons loll in the arm- 
chair which we should like; . . . our tailors 
fit us badly; our butchers give us the youngest 
mutton; our tradesmen dun us more quickly 
than other people's, because they know we 
are good-natured; and our servants go out 
whenever they like, and openly have their 
friends to supper in the kitchen. — The New- 
comes, chap, xxxiii. 

OF course from the women the quarreling 
will spread to the gentlemen. That 
always happens. — Philip, chap. xx. 

PEOPLE in the little world, as I have been 
told, quarrel and fight, and go on abusing 
each other and are not reconciled for ever so 
long. But people in the great world are 
surely wiser in their generation. They have 
differences; they cease seeing each other. 
They make up and come together again; 
and no questions are asked. — The Virgin- 
ians, chap. Ivii. 

WHEN we drive up to a friend's house, 
. . . when we enter the drawing- 
room, . . . does it ever happen that we in- 
terrupt a . . . row ? that we come simpering 
and smiling in and stepping over the delusive 
ashes of a still burning . . . heat? — The 
Virginians, chap. Ivi. 



QUARRELS 137 

WHEN you and your brother are friends, 
his doings are indifferent to you. 
When you have quarreled, all his outgoings 
and incomings you know as if you were his 
spy. — Vanity Fair, chap. xi. 

HOW finely some people, by the way, can 
hang up quarrels — or pop them into 
a drawer — as they do their work when dinner 
is announced, and take them out again at a 
convenient season! — Lovel the Widower, 
chap. iv. 

THERE seems to be something more noble 
in the success of a gallant resistance 
than of an attack however brave. — Cornhill 
to Cairo, chap. iv. 

WE don't understand each other, but we 
feel each other, as it were, by instinct. 
Each thinks in his own way, but knows what 
the other is thinking. We fight mute battles, 
don't you see? and our thoughts, though 
we don't express them, are perceptible to one 
another and come out from our eyes, or pass 
out from us somehow, and meet, and fight, 
and strike and wound. — The Newcomes, 
chap. Ixvi. 

THAT woman whom I called friend once, 
but who is the most false, depraved and 
dangerous of her sex. In this way do ladies 



138 RELATIONS 

. . . sometimes speak of ladies when quarrels 
separate them, revenge in their hearts. — The 
Newcomes, chap, xxxiv. 



RELATIONS 

INDEED, dear relations, if the public 
wants to know our little faults, ... I 
think I know who will not grudge the requi- 
site information. . . . Aunt Candour, . . . 
don't you know what we had for dinner yes- 
terday, and the amount (monstrous extrava- 
gance) of the washerwoman's bill. — Philip, 
chap, xxxvi. 

AND so, between one brother who meant 
no unkindness, and another who was 
all affection and good-will, this undoubting 
woman created difference, distrust, dislike, 
which might one day possibly lead to open 
rupture. — The Newcomes, chap. xx. 

NO people are so ready to give a man a bad 
name as his own kinsfolk; and, having 
made him that present they are ever most 
unwilling to take it back again. If they give 
him nothing else in the days of his difficulty, 
he may be sure of their pity, and that he is 
held up as an example to his young cousins 
to avoid. If he loses his money they call him 
poor fellow, and point morals out of him. 
If he falls among thieves, the respectable 



RELATIONS 139 

Pharisees of his race turn their heads aside 
and leave him penniless and bleeding. They 
clap him on the back kindly enough when 
he returns after shipwreck, with money in his 
pocket. How naturally Joseph's brothers 
made salaams to him, and admired him, and 
did him honour when they found the poor 
outcast a prime minister, and worth ever so 
much money! Surely human nature is not so 
much altered since the days of those primeval 
Jews. We would not thrust brother Joseph 
down a well, and sell him bodily, but — but if 
he has scrambled out of a well of his own 
digging, and got out of his early bondage 
into renown and credit, at least we applaud 
him, and respect him and are proud of Jos- 
eph as a member of the family. — The New- 
comes, chap. V. 

YES, if a man's character is to be abused, say 
what you will, there's nobody like a rela- 
tion to do the business.— FawzVy Fair, chap. xix. 

BUT a man's own kinsmen can play him 
slippery tricks at times, and he finds 
himself none the better for trusting them. — 
The Virginians, chap. xxii. 

THIS must be owned, that to love one's 
relatives is not always an easy task; to 
live with one's neighbours is sometimes not 
amusing. — The Virginians, chap. Ixxxvi. 



I40 RELIGION 



RELIGION 

''T'^IS not the dying for a faith that's so 
J- hard . . . every man of every nation 
has done that — 'tis the hving up to it that is 
difficult. — Esmond, chap, vi, bk. i. 

IS the glory of Heaven to be sung only by 
gentlemen in black coats? Must the 
truth be only expounded in gown and sur- 
plice, and out of those two vestments can no- 
body preach it ? — English Humourists ('Con- 
greve and Addison'). 

I DOUBT whether that practice of piety 
inculcated upon us by our womankind in 
early youth, namely, to be thankful because 
we are better off than somebody else, be a 
very rational religious exercise. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. Ixvi. 

ON the matter of church I am not going to 
make any boast. That awful subject 
lies between a man and his conscience. I 
have known men of lax faith pure and just 
in their lives, as I have met very loud-pro- 
fessing Christians loose in their morality, and 
hard and unjust in their dealings. — Denis 
Duval, chap. vi. 



REMEMBRANCE 141 

MERE religious hypocrites, preaching 
forever and not beheving a word of 
their own sermons; infidels in broad brims and 
sables, expounding, exhorting, comminating, 
blessing, without any faith in their own para- 
dise, or fear about their pandemonium. . . . 
These people are not heavenly-minded; they 
are of the world, worldly, and have not yet 
got their feet off of it. . . . Folks have their 
religion in some handy mental lock-up, as it 
were, a valuable medicine, to be taken in ill 
health; and a man administers his nostrum 
to his neighbour, and recommends his private 
cure for the other's complaint. ... Of 
spiritual and bodily physic, who are more fond 
and eager dispensers than women? — The 
Virginians, chap. xlv. 

REMEMBRANCE 

WHEN the heart is withered do the old 
love to remember how it once was 
fresh and beat with warm emotions? When 
the spirits are languid and weary, do we like 
to think how bright they were in other days, 
the hope how buoyant, the sympathies how 
ready, the enjoyment of life how keen, and 
eager ? So they fall — the buds of prime, the 
florid harvests of summer — fall and wither, 
and the naked branches shiver in winter. — 
The Virginians, chap. liv. 



142 REMEMBRANCE 

FORGOTTEN tones of love recur to us, 
and kind glances shine out of the past — 
O, so bright and clear! O, so longed after, be- 
cause they are out of reach, . . . more prized 
because unattainable, more bright because of 
the contrast of present darkness and solitude, 
whence there is no escape. — Esmond, chap, 
ix, bk. i. 

AS the Lady Castlewood spoke bitterly, 
rapidly, without a tear, he never offered 
a word of appeal or remonstrance, but sat at 
the foot of his prison-bed, stricken only with 
the more pain at thinking it was that soft and 
beloved hand which should stab him so cru- 
elly and powerless against her fatal sorrow. 
Her words, as she spoke, struck the chords of 
all his memory, and the whole of his boyhood 
and youth passed within him, whilst this 
lady, so fond and gentle but yesterday — this 
good angel whom he had loved and wor- 
shipped — stood before him, pursuing him 
vdth. keen words and aspect malign. — Es- 
mond, chap, i, bk. ii. 

TS memory as strong as expectancy? fruition 
-■- as hunger ? gratitude as desire ? — Esmond, 
chap, vii, bk. ii. 

"npIS the privilege of old age to be garru- 

-■- lous, and its happiness to remember 

early days. As I sink back in my arm-chair, 

safe and sheltered post tot discrimina, and 



REMEMBRANCE 143 

happier than it has been the lot of most . . . 
to be, the past comes back to me, . . . and 
I look at it scared and astonished some- 
times; as huntsmen look at the gaps and 
ditches over which they have leapt, and won- 
der how they are alive. — Denis Duval, 
chap. iv. 

XT is an old saying, that we forget nothing; 
A as people in fever begin suddenly to talk the 
language of their infancy, we are stricken by 
memory sometimes, and old affections rush 
back on us as vivid as in the time when they 
were our daily talk, when their presence 
gladdened our eyes, when their accents 
thrilled in our ears. — The Newcomes, chap. 

XV. 

I SUPPOSE if one lives to be a hundred, 
there are certain passages of one's early 
life whereof the recollection will always 
carry us back to youth again. — Pendennis, 
chap. vii. 

PARTING and forgetting! What faithful 
heart can do these ? Our great thoughts, 
our great affections, the Truths of our life, 
never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate 
from our consciousness; shall follow it 
whithersoever that shall go; and are of their 
nature divine and immortal. — Esmond, chap, 
vi, bk. iii. 



144 REMORSE AND REGRET 

WE forget nothing. The memory sleeps, 
but wakens again; I often think how 
it shall be when, after the last sleep of death, 
the reveiUe'e shall arouse us forever, and the 
past in one flash of self-consciousness rush 
back, like the soul, revivified. — Esmond, 
chap, vii, bk. iii. 

I BELIEVE a man forgets nothing. I've 
seen a flower or heard some trivial word 
or two, which have awakened recollections 
that somehow had lain dormant for scores of 
years. . . . Some day, I wonder, will every- 
thing we have seen and thought and done come 
and flash across our minds in this way? — 
Barry Lyndon, chap. xiv. 

REMORSE AND REGRET 

WE take such life offerings as our due 
commonly. The old French satirist 
avers that in a love affair, there is usually one 
person who loves and the other, qui se laisse 
aimer; it is only in later days, perhaps when 
the treasures of love are spent and the kind 
hand cold which ministered them, that we 
remember how tender it was, how soft to 
soothe, how eager to shield, how ready to 
support and caress. The ears may no longer 
hear which would have received our words of 
thanks so delightedly. Let us hope those 
fruits of love though tardy, are yet not all too 



REMORSE AND REGRET 145 

late, and though we bring our tribute of rev- 
erence and gratitude, it may be to a grave- 
stone, there is an acceptance even there for 
the stricken heart's oblation of fond remorse, 
contrite memories and pious tears. . . . Did 
we not say at our tale's commencement, that 
all stories were old? . . . And so may love 
and repentance and forgiveness endure even 
till the end. — Tlie Newcomes, chap. xx. 

REMORSE! . . . that villain will never 
feel it. . . . Time change that rogue. 
Unless he is wholesomely punished, he will 
grow a greater scoundrel every year. I am in- 
clined to think, sir, . . . that you, too, are 
spoiled by this wicked world and these 
heartless . . . people. You wish to live 
well with the enemy and with us too, Pen- 
dennis. It can't be. He who is not with 
us is against us. I very much fear, sir, that 
the women, the women, you understand, 
have been talking you over. — The NeW' 
comes, chap. Ixvi. 

DO you imagine there's a great deal of 
genuine right-down remorse in the 
world? Don't people rather find excuses 
which make their minds easy; endeavour to 
prove to themselves that they have been la- 
mentably belied and misunderstood; and try 
and forgive the persecutors? — Roundabout 
Papers ('De Finibus'). 



146 REMORSE AND REGRET 

HE wished the deed undone for which he 
had laboured so. He was not the first 
that has regretted his own act, or brought about 
his own undoing. — Esmond, chap, ix, bk. iii. 

ARE there not many people in every one's 
acquaintance who, as soon as they have 
made a bargain, repent of it ? — Philip, chsip.xx. 

LET us be assured that there is no more 
cruel remorse than that, and no groans 
more piteous than those of wounded self-love. 
— Pendennis, chap. xx. 

WHICH of us has not idle words to re- 
call, flippant jokes to regret? . . . 
Have you never had a dispute and found out 
that you were wrong? So much the worse 
for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujour s 
avoir raison. . . . His rage is not a fever-fit 
but a black poison inflaming him, distorting 
his judgment, . . . causing him more cruel 
suffering than ever he can afflict on an enemy. 
— Roundabout Papers (' On Screens in Dining- 
rooms'), 

AND for my part, I believe that remorse 
is the least active of all a man's moral 
senses — the very easiest to be deadened when 
wakened: and in some never wakened at all. 
We grieve at being found out and at the 
idea of . . . punishment; but the mere sense 
of wrong makes very few people unhappy in 
Vanity Fair. — Vanity Fair, chap. xli. 



REVENGE 147 

YOU see there come moments of sorrow 
after the most brilliant victories, and 
you conquer and rout the enemy utterly, and 
then regret that you fought. — The New- 
comes, chap, xxxiii. 

HOW useless regrets are, and how the in- 
dulgence of sentiment only serves to 
make people more miserable! — Vanity Fair, 
chap. XXX. 

WHO has not learned things too late? 
. . . Whose life is not a disappoint- 
ment? Who carries his entire to the grave 
without a mutilation ? I never knew anybody 
who was happy quite, or who has not had to 
ransom himself out of the hands of Fate wnth 
the payment of some dearest treasure or other. 
Lucky if we are left alone afterwards, when 
we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits 
us no more. — Pendennis, chap. Ixix. 

REVENGE 

AH! Revenge is wrong. . . . Let alone 
that the wisest and best of all Judges has 
condemned it. It blackens the hearts of 
men. It distorts their views of right. It sets 
them to devise evil. It causes them to think 
unjustly of others. It is not the noblest re- 
turn for injury, not even the bravest way of 
meeting it. The greatest courage is to bear 



148 SCENERY 

persecution, not to answer when you are 
reviled, and when a wrong has been done you 
to forgive. — The Newcomes, chap. Ixiv. 

WHEN angered the best of us mistake 
our own motives, as we do those of 
the enemy who inflames us. What may be 
private revenge, we take to be indignant 
virtue, and just revolt against WTong. — The 
Newcomes, chap. Ixvi. 

SCENERY 

AND the party moved on toward a grand 
house that was before them with many 
gray towers and vanes on them, and windows 
flaming in the sunshine; and a great army of 
rooks, wheeling over their heads, made for the 
woods behind the house — . . . the great old 
house which he had come to inhabit. It stood 
on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in 
which were rooks' nests, where the birds at 
morning, and returning home at evening, 
made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill 
was a river with a steep, ancient bridge 
crossing it; and beyond that a large, pleasant 
green flat, where the village of Castlewood 
stood, and stands, with the church in the 
midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with 
the blacksmith's forge beside it, and the sign 
of the 'Three Castles' on the elm. The 
London road stretched away towards the ris- 
ing sun, and to the west were swelling hills 



SCENERY 149 

and peaks, behind which, many a time, Harry 
Esmond saw the same sun setting that he 
now looks on thousands of miles away across 
the great ocean — in a new Castlewood, by 
another stream, that bears, like the new 
country of wandering ^neas, the fond names 
of the land of his youth. — Esmond, chap, iii, 
bk. i. 

IT even stretches our minds painfully to 
try and comprehend part of the beauty 
of the Parthenon — ever so little of it — the 
beauty of a single column, — a fragment of a 
broken shaft lying under the astonishing blue 
sky there, in the midst of that unrivalled 
landscape. There may be grander aspects 
of nature, but none more deliciously beauti- 
ful. The hills rise in perfect harmony, and 
fall in the most exquisite cadences — the sea 
seems brighter, the islands more purple, the 
clouds more light and rosy than elsewhere. 
As you look up through the open roof, you 
are almost oppressed by the serene depth of 
the blue overhead. — Cornhill to Cairo, 
chap. V. 

AWAY! ay, away, away amid the green 
vineyards, and golden cornfields; away 
up the steep mountains, where he frightened 
the eagles in their eyries; away down the 
clattering ravines, where the flashing cata- 
racts tumble; away through the dark pine 



150 SMOKING 

forests, where the hungry wolves are howl- 
ing; away over the dreary wolds, where the 
wild wind walks alone; . . . away through 
light and darkness, storm and sunshine, away 
by tower and town, high-road and hamlet. — 
A Legend of the Rhine, chap. v. 

SMOKING 

THE only substitute for ladies at dinners, 
or consolation for want of them, is — 
smoking. Cigars, introduced with the coffee, 
if anything can, make us forget the absence 
of the other sex. — Sketches and Travels in 
London (* On Some Old Customs at the 
Dinner Table'). 

WHAT is this smoking that it should be 
considered a crime ? I believe in my 
heart that women are jealous of it, as of a 
rival. . . . The fact is, that the cigar is a rival 
to the ladies, and their conqueror, too. . . . 
A propensity which can inflict an injury upon 
no person or thing except the coat and the per- 
son of him who indulges in it. A custom 
honoured and observed in almost all the na- 
tions of the world; ... a custom which, far 
from leading a man into any wickedness or dis- 
sipation, . . . begets only benevolent silence 
and thoughtful good-humoured observation. 
. . . The calm smoker has a sweet compan- 
ion in his pipe. — Fitz-Boodle's Confessions. 



SMOKING 151 

HOW the worship of the sacred plant of 
tobacco has spread through all Europe ! 
I am sure that the persons who cry out against 
the use of it are guilty of superstition and 
unreason, and that it would be a proper and 
easy task for scientific persons to write an 
encomium upon the weed. In solitude it is 
the pleasantest companion possible, and in 
company never de trop. To a student it sug- 
gests all sorts of agreeable thoughts, it re- 
freshes the brain when weary and every se- 
dentary cigar-smoker will tell you how much 
good he has had from it, and how he has 
been able to return to his labour after a 
quarter of an hour's mild interval of the de- 
lightful leaf of Havana. Drinking has gone 
from among us since smoking came in, . . . 
Indeed, . . . many improvements of so- 
cial life and converse must date with the 
introduction of the pipe. — Little Travels 
(' From Richmond in Surrey to Brussels in 
Belgium'). 

IF I were a great prince and rode outside of 
coaches (as I should if I were a great 
prince) I would, whether I smoked or not, 
have a case of the best Havanas in my pock- 
et — not for my own smoking, but to give 
them to the Snobs on the coach, who smoke 
the vilest cheroots. They poison the air with 
the odour of their filthy weeds. A man at all 
easy in his circumstances would spare him- 



152 SOCIETY 

self much annoyance by taking the above 
simple precaution. — Little Travels (' From 
Richmond in Surrey to Brussels in Belgium'). 



SOCIETY 

WHETHER as guest or as entertainer, 
your part and business in society is 
to make people as happy and as easy as you 
can; the master gives you his best wine and 
welcome — you give, in your turn, a smiling 
face, a disposition to be pleased and to please. 
— Sketches and Travels in London (* On the 
Pleasures of Being a Fogy'). 

WHAT is the secret of great social suc- 
cess? It is not to be gained by 
beauty, or wealth, or birth, or wit, or valour, 
or eminence of any kind. It is a gift of Fort- 
une, bestowed, like that goddess's favours, 
capriciously. Look, dear madame, at the 
most fashionable ladies at present reigning 
in London, are they better-bred, or more 
amiable, or richer, or more beautiful than 
yourself? See, good sir, the men who lead 
the fashion. Are they wiser, or wittier or more 
agreeable than you ? — Philip, chap. xl. 

BUT one does not eat a man's salt, as it 
were, at these dinners. There is noth- 
ing sacred in this kind of London hospitality. 
Your white waistcoat fills a gap in a man's 



SOCIETY 153 

table, and retires filled for its service of the 
evening. ... If we were not to talk freely of 
those we dine with, how mum London would 
be! Some of the pleasantest evenings I have 
ever spent have been when we have sate after 
a great dinner, en petit comite, and abused 
the people who are gone. You have your 
turn, mon cher; but why not? — The New- 
comes, chap. V. 

SOCIETY has this good at least: that it 
lessens our conceit by teaching us our 
insignificance, and making us acquainted 
with our betters. — The Virginians, chap, 
xxiii. 

COURAGE ? Heart ? What are these to 
you and me in the world ? A man may 
have private virtues as he may have half 
a million in the funds. What we dii monde 
expect is, that he should be lively, agreeable, 
keep a decent figure. — The Virginians, chap. 
Ixxii. 

YOU toss down the page with scorn, and 
say, 'It is not true.' Human nature is 
not so bad as this cynic would have it to be. 
You would make no difference between the 
rich and the poor. Be it so. You would not. 
But own that your next-door neighbour 
would. Nor is this addressed to you; . . . 
no, no, we are not so rude as to talk about you 



154 SOCIETY 

to your face; but, if we may not speak of the 
lady who has just left the room, what is to 
become of conversation and society! — The 
Newcomes, chap. v. 

TO Londoners everything seems to have 
happened but yesterday. Nobody has 
time to miss his neighbour who goes away. 
People go to the Cape, or on a campaign, or 
on a tour round the world, or to India and 
return, . . . and we fancy it was only the 
other day they left us, so engaged is every man 
in his individual speculations, studies, strug- 
gles; so selfish does our life make us; selfish 
but not ill-natured. We are glad to see an 
old friend, though we do not weep when he 
leaves us. We humbly acknowledge, if fate 
calls us away likewise, we are no more missed 
than any other atom. — The Newcomes, 
chap. xl. 

SOCIETY having ordained certain cus- 
toms, men are bound to obey the law of 
society and conform to its harmless orders. — 
Book of Snobs. 

NO training is so useful for children, 
great or small, as the company of their 
betters in rank or natural parts; in whose 
society they lose the over-weening sense 
of their own importance, which stay-at- 
home people very commonly learn. — Esmond, 
chap, ii, bk. iii. 



SOCIETY 



155 



IF we are to be peering into everybody's 
private life, speculating upon their in- 
come, and cutting them if we don't approve 
of their expenditure — why, what a howling 
wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity 
Fair would be. Every man's hand would be 
against his neighbour in this case, my dear 
sir, and the benefits of civilization would be 
done away with. We should be quarreling, 
abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses 
would become caverns, and we should go in 
rags because we cared for nobody. Rents 
would go down. Parties wouldn't be given 
any more. . . . All the delights of life, I say, 
would go to the deuce, if people did but act 
upon their silly principles, and avoid those 
whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by 
a little charity and mutual forbearance, 
things are made to go on pleasantly enough. 
We may abuse a man as much as we like, 
and call him the greatest rascal unhung, but 
do we wish to hang him therefore? No. 
We shake hands when we meet. If his cook 
is good we forgive him, and go and dine 
with him, and we expect he will do the 
same by us. Thus trade flourishes, civilisa- 
tion advances, peace is kept, new dresses are 
wanted for new assemblies. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. li. 



156 SOCIETY 

A SOCIETY that sets up to be polite and 
ignores Letters, I hold to be a Snobbish 
society. You who despise your neighbour 
are a Snob, you who forget your own friends, 
meanly to follow after those of a higher de- 
gree, are a Snob. You who are ashamed of 
your poverty and blush for your calling, are 
a Snob, ... as are you who are proud of 
your wealth. — Book of Snobs, chap. last. 

IF you were a bachelor, say, with a good 
fortune, or a widower who wanted con- 
solation, or a lady giving very good parties 
and belonging to the monde, you would find 
them agreeable people. If you were a . . . 
young barrister . . . or a lady, old or young, 
not quite of the monde, your opinion of them 
would not be quite so favourable. I have 
seen them cut and scorn and avoid and caress 
and kneel down and worship the same person. 
When Mrs. Lovel first gave parties, . . . were 
ever shoulders colder? . . . Now they love 
her, they fondle her step-children, they praise 
her to her face and behind her handsome back, 
they take her hand in public, they call her by 
her Christian name, they fall into ecstasies over 
her toilettes and would fetch coals for her 
dressing-room fire if she but gave them the 
word. 5'/^e is not changed. She is the same lady. 
. . . But, you see, her prosperity has brought 
virtues into evidence which people did not per- 
ceive when she was poor. — Philip, chap. iv. 



SOCIETY 157 

TF our people of ton are selfish, at any rate 
•^ they show that they are selfish, and being 
cold-hearted at least have no hypocrisy of 
affection. — Tiie Virginians, chap. ii. 

IF we quarreled with all the people who 
abuse us behind our backs and began to 
tear their eyes out as soon as we set ours on 
them, what a life it would be, and when 
should we have any quiet? Backbiting is 
all fair in society. Abuse me, and I will abuse 
you; but let us be friends when we meet. 
Have we not all entered a dozen rooms and 
been sure, from the countenances of the 
amiable persons present, that they have been 
discussing our little peculiarities, perhaps, as 
we were on the stairs. Was our visit, there- 
fore, the less agreeable? Did we quarrel 
and say hard words to one another's faces? 
No, we wait until some of our dear friends 
take their leave, and then comes our turn. 
My back is at my neighbour's service; as 
soon as that is turned, let him make what 
faces he thinks proper, but when we meet, 
we grin and shake hands like well-bred folk, 
to whom clean linen is not more necessary 
than a clean, sweet-looking countenance and 
a nicely got-up smile for company. — The 
Newcomes, chap, xxxiii. 

I THINK it is one good test of gentility to 
be looked down on by vulgar people. — 
A Shabby Genteel Story, chap. i. 



158 SUCCESS 

YOU may give up society without any 
great pang, or anything but a sensation 
of rehef at the parting; but severe are the 
mortifications and pains you have if society 
gives up you. — Pendennis, chap. lix. 

AH, what a comfort it is, I say again, that 
we have backs and that our ears don't 
grow on them! He that has ears to hear let 
him stuff them with cotton. — The Virginians, 
chap, xxxviii. 

SUCCESS 

IF the best men do not draw the great prizes 
in life, we know it has been so settled by 
the great Ordainer of the lottery. We own, 
and see daily how the false and worthless 
live and prosper, while the good are called 
away. We perceive in every man's life, the 
maimed happiness, the bootless endeavour, 
the struggle of Right and Wrong, in which 
the strong often succumb and the swift fail, 
we see flowers of good blooming in foul 
places, as in the most lofty and splendid fort- 
unes, flaws of vice and meanness, and stains 
of evil. — Pendennis, chap. Ixxv. 

TF success is rare and slow, everybody 
A knows how quick and easy ruin is. — 
Vanity Fair, chap, xviii. 



SUCCESS 159 

THIS world is wide, and the tastes of 
mankind happily so various, that there 
is always a chance for every man, and he 
may win the prize by his genius or by his 
good fortune. But what is the chance of 
success or failure, of obtaining popularity, or 
of holding it when achieved ? One man goes 
over the ice, which bears him, and a score 
who follow, flounder in. — Pendennis, chap, 
xli. 

IF there is an alloy in all success, is there not 
a something wholesome in all disap- 
pointment? — Sketches and Travels in Lon- 
don (*On the Pleasures of Being a Fogy'). 

DO you suppose — when two women have 
lived together in pretty much the same 
rank of life — if one suddenly gets promotion, 
is carried off to higher spheres, do you sup- 
pose, I say, that the unsuccessful woman 
will be pleased at the successful woman's 
success? — Philip, chap. xxvi. 

WELL, well — a carriage and three thou- 
sand pounds a year is not the summit 
of the reward, nor the end of God's judgment 
of men. If quacks prosper as often as they 
go to the wall — if zanies succeed and knaves 
arrive at fortune, and, vice versa, sharing ill 
luck and prosperity for all the world like the 
ablest and most honest amongst us — I say. 



i6o SUFFERING 

brother, the gifts and pleasures of Vanity 
Fair are not to be held of any great account. 
— Vanity Fair, chap, xxxviii. 

HOW is it, and by what, and whom, that 
Greatness is achieved? Is Merit — is 
Madness the patron? Is it Frolic or Fort- 
une? Is it Fate that awards successes and 
defeats? Is it the just Cause that ever wins? 
To be sure, this wisdom d'apres coup is easy. 
We wonder at this man's rashness now the 
deed is done, and marvel at the other's fault. 
What generals some of us are upon paper; 
what repartees come to our mind when the 
talk is finished; and the game over, how 
well we see how it should have been played. 
• — The Virginians, chap. Ixxiv. 

I HAVE seen too much of success in life to 
take off my hat and huzza to it as it 
passes in its gilt coach; and would do my 
little part with my neighbours on foot, that 
they should not gape with too much wonder, 
nor applaud too loudly. — Esmond, Intro- 
duction, bk. i, 

SUFFERING 

AT certain periods of life we live years of 
emotion in a few weeks and look back 
on those times as on great gaps between the 
old life and the new. You do not know how 
much you suffer in those critical maladies of 



SUFFERING i6i 

the heart, until the disease is over and you 
look back on it afterwards. During the time 
the suffering is at least sufferable. The day 
passes in more or less of pain, and the night 
wears away somehow. 'Tis only in after days 
that we see what the danger has been — as a 
man out a-hunting or riding for his life, looks 
back at a leap and wonders how he should 
have survived the taking of it. O dark 
months of grief and rage! of wrong and cruel 
endurance! . . . We are indocile to put up 
with grief; however, reficimus rates quassas: we 
tempt the ocean again and again, and try 
upon new ventures. — Esmond, chap, i, bk. ii. 

WHAT does a seaman do in a storm if 
mast and rudder are carried away? 
He ships a jury-mast, and steers as he best 
can with an oar. What happens if your roof 
falls in a tempest ? After the first stun of the 
calamity, the sufferer starts up, gropes around. 
... If the palace burns down, you take 
shelter in the barn. What man's life is not 
overtaken by one or more of these tornadoes 
that send us out of the course, and fling us on 
rocks to shelter as best we may ? — Esmond, 
chap, ix, bk. i. 

HE, at least, w^ho has suffered as a child, 
and is not quite perverted in that early 
school of unhappiness, learns to be gentle 
and long-suffering with little children. — 
Esmond, chap, iii, bk. i. 



i62 SUFFERING 

THE more )^ou cry, the more you will be 
able and desirous to do so. — Pendennis, 
chap, xxiii. 

WHO has not admired the artifices and 
delicate approaches with which wo- 
men 'prepare' their friends for bad news. — 
Va7iity Fair, chap. xvi. 

SHE had oldened in that time as people do 
who suffer silently great mental pain; 
and learned much that she had not suspected 
before. She was taught by that bitter teacher 
Misfortune. . . . But out of her griefs and 
cares, as will happen, I think when these trials 
fall upon a kindly heart, and are not too un- 
bearable, grew up a number of thoughts and 
excellences which had never come into exist- 
ence, had not her sorrow and misfortunes 
engendered them. Sure occasion is the father 
of most that is good in us. As you have seen 
the awkward fingers and clumsy tools of a 
prisoner cut and fashion the most delicate 
little pieces of carved work, or achieve the 
most prodigious underground labours, and 
cut through walls of masonry, and saw iron 
bars and fetters; 'tis misfortune that awakens 
ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance in 
hearts where these qualities had never come 
to life but for the circumstance which gave 
them a being. — Esmond, chap, ix, bk. i. 



SYMPATHY 163 



SYMPATHY 

THERE are things we divine without 
speaking and know though they hap- 
pen out of our sight. . . . Who shall say how 
far sympathy reaches, and how truly love can 
prophesy? — Esmond, chap, vii, bk. iii. 

TO how many people can any one tell all ? 
Who will be open where there is no 
sympathy, or has call to speak to those who 
never can understand? — Vanity Fair, chap, 
xviii. 

BETTER to be alone in the world and 
utterly friendless than to have sham 
friends and no sympathy. — A Shabby Genteel 
Story, chap. i. 

I HAVE always admired the way in which 
the tender creatures who cannot exist 
without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain 
friend of their own sex from whom they are 
almost inseparable. — Vanity Fair, chap. 



THOUGH the grief of those they love is 
untold, women hear it; as they soothe 
it with unspoken consolations. — The New- 
comes, chap. Ixxvi. 



i64 TEMPER 

WHEN two women get together to like 
a man, they help each other on — 
each pushes the other forward — and the 
second, out of sheer sympathy, becomes as 
eager as the principal; at least, so it is said 
by philosophers who have examined this 
science. — Pendennis, chap, xlvii. 



TO compress, bottle up, cork down, and 
prevent your anger from present explo- 
sion is called keeping your temper. — The 
Virginians, chap. v. 

A GENTLEMAN may be out of temper 
though he does not owe a shilling, and 
though he may be ever so selfish, he must 
occasionally feel dispirited and lonely. — 
Pendennis, chap. Ixvii. 

SURELY a fine, furious temper, if ac- 
companied with a certain magnanimity 
and bravery which often go together with it, 
is one of the most precious and fortunate gifts 
with which a gentleman or lady can be en- 
dowed. — The Newcomes, chap, xxxiii. 

WHO always keeps good health and 
good humour? Do not philosophers 
grumble? Are not sages sometimes out of 
temper? And do not angel-women go ofi" in 
tantrums? — Roundabout Papers ('Ogres'). 



TEMPTATIONS 165 

YOU see in these manages de convenance 
though a coronet may be convenient to 
a young creature, . . . there are articles 
which the marriage-monger cannot make to 
convene at all: tempers over which M. de 
Foy and his like have no control, and tastes 
which cannot be put into the marriage settle- 
ment. — The Newcomes, chap. xxxi. 

TO that energetic telnper with which nat- 
ure had gifted her, a temper which she 
tied up sometimes, and kept from barking and 
biting, but which, when unmuzzled, was an 
animal of . . . just apprehension. . . . The 
cowards brought it sops and patted it, the 
prudent gave it a clear berth, and walked 
round so as not to meet it. — The Newcomes, 
chap, xxxiii. 

TEMPTATIONS 

TO be young, to be good-looking, to be 
healthy, to be hungry three times a 
day, to have plenty of money, a great alacrity 
of sleeping, and nothing to do — all these — 
I dare say, are very dangerous temptations 
to a man, but I think I know some who 
would like to undergo the dangers of the 
trial. — Philip, chap. vi. 

IF you take temptations into account, who 
is to say that he is better than his neigh- 
bour? A comfortable career of prosperity, 



i66 THOUGHTS 

if it does not make people honest, at least 
keeps them so. An alderman coming from 
a turtle-feast will not step out of his carriage 
to steal a leg of mutton; but put him to 
starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf. — 
Vanity Fair, chap. xli. 

WHEN a man is tempted to do a tempt- 
ing thing, he can find a hundred in- 
genious reasons for gratifying his liking, — 
Pendennis, chap. Ixii. 

ARE we much better than our neighbours ? 
Do we never yield to our peculiar 
temptation, our pride, or our avarice, or our 
vanity, or what not? — The Newcomes, 
chap. xlv. 

TEMPTATION is an obsequious servant 
that has had no objection to the coun- 
try. — Pendennis, chap, xxvii. 

THE Judge of right and wrong. Who better 
understands than we can do, our causes 
and temptations towards evil actions, . . . 
reserves the sentence for His own tribunal. — 
The Newcomes, chap. Ixvi. 

THOUGHTS 

How one's thoughts will travel! and 
how quickly our wishes beget them! — 
Pendennis, chap. ii. 



THOUGHTS 167 

EVERY man must say his own thoughts in 
his own voice, and in his own way. — 
Lectures. 

THEY say our words once out of our lips 
go travelling in omne aevum reverberat- 
ing forever and ever. If our words, why not 
our thoughts. If the Has Been, why not the 
Might Have Been? — Roundabout Papers 
('The Last Sketch'). 

I TRUST that some of the best actions we 
have all of us committed in our lives 
have been committed in fancy. It is not all 
wickedness we are thinking, que diable! . . . 
No, no. There are the pure, there are the kind, 
there are the gentle. There are sweet, un- 
spoken thanks before a fair scene of nature; 
at a sun setting before a glorious sea; or a 
moon and a host of stars shining over it. At 
a hundred moments or occurrences of the day 
good thoughts pass through the mind, let us 
trust, which never are spoken; prayers are 
made which never are said. . . . The thoughts 
which have passed through our brains are as 
actual as any to which our tongues have 
given currency. . . . What fine things we 
have thought of, haven't we? all of us? — 
Roundabout Papers ('On Two Roundabout 
Papers which I Intended to Write'). 



1 68 TRUTH 

IF there be some thoughts and actions of 
his life from the memory of which a man 
shrinks with shame, sure there are some 
which he may be proud to own and remem- 
ber; forgiven injuries, conquered tempta- 
tions, . . . and difficulties vanquished by 
endurance. — Esmond, chap, i, bk. ii. 

LIFE is not altogether jocular, . . . and 
one comes upon serious thoughts suddenly 
as upon a funeral in the street. — Sketches 
and Travels in London ('A Word about Balls 
in Season'). 

HAVE you ever killed any one in your 
thoughts? Has your heart compassed 
any man's death? In your mind, have you 
ever taken a brand from the altar and slain 
your brother? How many plain ordinary 
faces of men do we look at, unknowing of 
murder behind those eyes. Lucky for you 
and me, brother, that we have good thoughts 
unspoken. But the bad ones! . . . Eschew 
dark thoughts and desire to be cheerful and 
merry. Roundabout Papers {' On Two Round- 
about Papers which I Intended to Write'). 

TRUTH 

FOR is not truth the master always, and 
does she not have the power and hold 
the book ? — The Newcomes, chap. Ixvi. 



VANITY 169 

ONE can't tell all the truth, I suppose, but 
one can tell nothing but the truth. — 
Pendennis, chap. xxxv. 

TRUTH, if yours happens to dififer from 
your neighbours, provokes your friend's 
coolness, . . . the world's persecution. — 
The Newcomes, chap, xxviii. 

ONE is bound to speak the truth as far 
as one knows it, . . . and a deal of 
disagreeable matter must come out in the 
course of such an undertaking. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. viii. 

I CANNOT help telling the truth as I view 
it, and describing what I see. To describe 
it otherwise than it seems to me, would be 
falsehood in that calling in which it has 
pleased Heaven to place me; treason to that 
conscience which says that men are weak; 
that truth must be told; that fault must be 
owned; that pardon must be prayed for; 
and that love reigns supreme over all. — 
Charity and Humour. 

VANITY 

HALF a fellow's pangs at losing a woman 
result from vanity more than affection. 
To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, 
to be sure; but look how easily we leave 
'em. — Pendennis, chap. xv. 



I70 VANITY 

AS he looks back in calmer days upon 
this period of his life, which he thought 
so unhappy, he can see that his own pride 
and vanity caused no small part of the mor- 
tifications which he attributed to other peo- 
ple's ill-will. — Esmond, chap, x, bk. i. 

CAN you, by taking thought, add to your 
moral stature? Ah, me, the doctor 
who preaches is only taller than most of us 
by the height of the pulpit: and when he 
steps down, I dare say he cringes to the 
duchess, . . . scolds about the dinner. All is 
vanity, look you, and so the preacher is 
vanity, too. — Philip, chap. xv. 

BUT you know you -will step over that 
boundary line of virtue and modesty 
into the district where humbug and vanity be- 
gin. . . . Search, search, . . . you know 
in your hearts, which of your ordinaire quali- 
ties you would pass off, and fain consider as 
first rate port. . . . We will assume then, 
dear brother, that you and I are tolerably 
modest people and, ourselves being thus out 
of the question, proceed to show how pre- 
tentious our neighbours are, and how very 
many of them would be port if they could. 
— Roundabout Papers ('Small Beer Chron- 
icle'). 



VANITY 171 

WHAT'S a woman at a looking-glass? 
. . . It's their place. They fly to it 
naturally. It pleases them. . . . What a deal 
of vanity that mirror has reflected, to be sure. 
— Book of Snobs, chap. last. 



IT is all vanity, to be sure: but who will 
not own to liking a little of it? I should 
like to know. What well-constituted mind, 
merely because it is transitory, dislikes 
roast-beef ? That is a vanity, but may every 
man who reads this, have a wholesome por- 
tion of it through life, I beg: aye, though my 
readers were five hundred thousand. Sit 
down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good, 
hearty appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy, 
the horse-radish, as you like it — don't spare 
it. — Vanity Fair, chap. li. 

STRANGE endurance of human vanity! 
We forgive injuries, but I doubt if we 
ever forgive slights of this nature put upon 
us, or forget circumstances in which our self- 
love had been made to sufifer. — Sketches and 
Travels in London (* On a Lady in an Opera 
Box'). 

DO not grudge me my vanity, if I allow 
you yours, or rather let us laugh at both 
indifferently and at ourselves and at each 
other. — Esmond, chap ii, bk. iii. 



172 VISITS AND TRAVEL 

LET us thank God for imparting to us 
poor, weak mortals, the inestimable 
blessing of vanity. How many half-witted 
votaries of the arts — poets, painters, actors, 
musicians, live upon this food and scarcely 
any other! If the delusion were to drop from 
Pipson's eyes and he should see himself as 
he is, if some malevolent genius were to min- 
gle with his feeble brains one fatal particle 
of common-sense, he would walk off of 
Waterloo Bridge and abjure poverty, inca- 
pacity, cold lodgings, ragged elbows and de- 
ferred hopes at once and forever. — Character 
Sketches ('The Artists'). 



w 



ITHOUT the affections all the world 
is vanity. — The Virginians, chap. xiv. 



UNDER what humble roofs does not 
Vanity hold her sway. — Philip, chap. xxi. 

VISITS AND TRAVEL 

A LONDONER who sees fresh faces 
and yawns at them every day, may 
smile at the eagerness with which country 
people expect a visitor. A cockney comes 
amongst them, and is remembered by his 
rural entertainers for years after he has left 
them, and forgotten them, very likely — 
floated far away from them on the vast Lon- 
don sea. But the islanders remember long 



VISITS AND TRAVEL 173 

after the mariner has sailed away, and can 
tell you what he said and what he wore, and 
how he looked, and how he laughed. In fine, 
a new arrival is an event in the country not to 
be understood by us who don't and would 
rather not know who hves next door. — 
Pendennis, chap. xxii. 

WE fall into the midst of a quiet family: 
we drop like a stone, say, into a pool 
— we are perfectly compact and cool, and 
little know the flutter and excitement we 
make there, disturbing the fish, frightening 
the ducks, and agitating the whole surface of 
the water. — The Virginians, chap, xxiii. 

DON'T you know that people are too glad 
to see anybody in the country? — Book 
of Snobs, chap. xxxi. 

WHEN a traveller talks to you perpet- 
ually about the splendour of his lug- 
gage, which he does not happen to have with 
him, . . . bewareof that traveller! He is, ten 
to one, an impostor. — Vanity Fair, chap. Ixvii. 

TO see with one's own eyes men and 
countries, is better than reading all the 
books of travel in the world. — Esmond, chap. 
V, bk. ii. 



174 WIT AND HUMOUR 



WIT AND HUMOUR 

TO hear fun made of our neighbours, even 
of some of our friends, does not make 
us very angry. — The Newcomes, chap, xxxii. 

IF we could but hear the unspoken jokes, 
how we should all laugh; if we could but 
speak them, how witty we should be! — 
Philip, chap, xxxii. 

IT is humiliating, it is consolatory, to re- 
mark with what small wit some of our 
friends are amused! — The Newcomes, chap. 
Ivi. 

I DON'T know that it is always at the best 
jokes that children laugh: — children and 
wise men, too. — Philip, chap. xv. 

IN the very gravest moments, . . . such 
strange contrasts and occasion of humour 
will arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirize 
the gloom, as it were, and to make it more 
gloomy. — Pendennis, chap. Hi. 

WITH regard to wit, people of fashion 
(as we are given to understand) are 
satisfied with a mere soupcon of it. — Character 
Sketches (' The Artists'). ' 



w 



WIT AND HUMOUR 175 

E can make jokes though we are ever 
so sad. — Philips chap. xlii. 



THE satire of people who have little nat- 
ural humour is seldom good sport for 
bystanders. I think dull men's, faceticB are 
mostly cruel. — The Virginians, chap. xiii. 

DON'T we know many an honest man 
who can no more comprehend a joke 
than he can turn a tune. — Roundabout Pa- 
pers ('Thorns in the Cushion*). 



H 



UMOUR is the mistress of tears.- 
English Humourists. 



AVERY little stone will sometimes knock 
down these Goliaths of wit. — Esmond, 
chap. V, bk. iii. 

IT is folly to say that this or that kind of 
humour is too good for the public, that 
only a chosen few can relish it. The best 
humour that we know of has been as eagerly 
received by the public as by the most delicate 
connoisseur. . . . Some may have a keener 
enjoyment of it than others, but all the world 
can be merry over it, and is always sure to 
welcome it. The best criterion of good 
humour is success. . . . To be greatly success- 
ful as a professional humourist, as in any other 
calling, a man must be quite honest, and 



176 WIT AND HUMOUR 

show that his heart is in his work. A bad 
preacher will get admiration, a hearing, with 
this point in his favour, where a man of 
three times his acquirements will only find 
indifference and coldness. — Critical Reviews 
('George Cruikshank'). 

HARLEQUIN without his mask is known 
to present a very sober countenance, 
and was himself, the story goes, the melan- 
choly patient whom the Doctor advised to go 
and see Harlequin — a man full of cares and 
perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self 
must always be serious to him, under what- 
ever mask or disguise or uniform he presents 
it to the public. And, as all of you here 
must needs be grave when you think of your 
own past and present. ... If humour only 
meant laughter, you would scarcely feel 
more interest about humorous writers than 
about the private life of poor Harlequin. . . . 
The humorous writer professes to awaken 
and direct your love, your pity, your kind- 
ness, your scorn for untruth, pretension, im- 
posture, your tenderness for the weak, the 
poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the 
best of his ability, he comments on all the 
ordinary actions and passions of life almost. 
He takes upon himself to be the week-day 
preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he 
finds and speaks, and feels the truth best, we 
regard him, esteem him, sometimes love him. 



WOMEN 177 

And as his business is to mark other people's 
lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his 
life, when he is gone, and yesterday's preacher 
becomes the text for to-day's sermon. — 
English Humourists ('Swift'). 

THIS kind of rude jesting was an evidence 
not only of an ill-nature, but a dull one. 
When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks 
out into a laugh, it is some very obvious com- 
bination of words, or discrepancy of objects, 
which provokes the infantine satirist, or 
tickles the boorish wag. — English Humourists 
('Prior, Gay and Pope'). 

WOMEN 

SINCE the days of Adam there has been 
hardly a mischief done in this world but 
a woman has been at the bottom of it. — 
Barry Lyndon, chap. i. 

WHO has not seen how women bully 
women? What tortures have men 
to endure comparable to those daily repeated 
shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor 
women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex. 
Poor victims. — Vanity Fair, chap, xxxiii. 

A GOOD woman is the loveliest flower 
that blooms under heaven; and ... we 
look with love and wonder upon its silent 
grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom 
of beauty. — Pendennis, chap. li. 



178 WOMEN 

THERE are some meannesses which are 
too mean even for man — woman, lovely 
woman alone, can venture to commit them. 
— A Shabby Genteel Story, chap. iii. 

AS for good women, these, my worthy read- 
er, the nature of these is to love, and 
to do kind offices.— Z'/ie Newcomes, chap. Ixxiv. 

WOMEN only know how to wound so. 
There is a poison on the tips of their 
little shafts, which stings a thousand times 
more than a man's blunter weapon. — Vanity 
Fair, chap. xxix. 

I SAY unto thee, all my troubles and joys, 
too, for that matter, have come from a 
woman. . . . And could you see every man's 
career in life, you would find a woman clogging 
him or clinging round his march and stopping 
him; or cheering him and goading him; or 
beckoning him out of her chariot, so that he 
goes up to her and leaves the race to be run 
without him; or bringing him the apple and 
saying, *Eat,* or fetching him the dagger 
and whispering 'Kill! yonder lies Duncan, 
and a crown and an opportunity.' — Esmond^ 
chap, v, bk. iii. 

'npHE present chronicler cannot help put- 

-■- ting in a little respectful remark here, and 

signifying his admiration of the conduct of 

ladies towards one another, and of the things 



WOMEN 179 

which they say, which they forbear to say, 
and which they say behind each other's 
backs. With what smiles and curtseys they 
stab each other! with what compliments they 
hate each other! with what determination of 
long-suffering they won't be offended! with 
what innocent dexterity they can drop the 
drop of poison into the cup of conversation, 
hand round the goblet smiling. — The Vir- 
ginians, chap. xiv. 

WOMEN like not only to conquer but 
to be conquered. — Tlie Virginians, 
chap. V. 

IF a man is in grief, who cheers him in 
trouble, who consoles him in wrath, who 
soothes him in joy, who makes him doubly 
happy in prosperity, who rejoices in disgrace, 
who backs him against the world, . . . who 
but women, if you please ? — The Virginians, 
chap. Ixii. 

AS every one of the dear sex is the rival of 
the rest of her kind, timidity passes for 
folly in their charitable judgments; and 
gentleness for dulness; and silence, which is 
but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion 
of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism, above 
all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female 
Inquisition. Thus, my dear and civilised 
reader, if you and I were to find ourselves 
this evening in a society of greengrocers, let 



i8o WOMEN 

us say, it is probable that our conversation 
would not be brilliant; if, on the other hand, 
a greengrocer should find himself at your 
refined and polite tea-table, where everybody 
was saying witty things, and everybody of 
fashion and repute tearing her friends to 
pieces in the most delightful manner, it is 
possible that the stranger would not be very 
talkative, and by no means interesting or 
interested. — Vanity Fair, chap. Ixii. 

WHEN the women of the house have set- 
tled a matter, is there much use in a 
man's resistance? It is the perseverance 
which conquers, the daily return to the ob- 
ject desired. Take my advice, my dear sir, 
when you see your womankind resolute 
about a matter, give up at once and have 
a quiet life. — Philip, chap, xxxii. 

ASSUREDLY, the greatest tyrants over 
women are women. — Vanity Fair, 
chap. xlix. 

WHAT kind-hearted woman, young or 
old, does not love match-making? — 
The Newcomes, chap. xv. 

A PERFECTLY honest woman, a woman 
who never flatters, who never manages, 
who never cajoles, who never conceals, . . . 
who never speculates on the effect which she 



WOMEN i8i 

produces, who never is conscious of unspoken 
admiration, what a monster, I say, would 
such a, female be! — The Newcomes, chap. xlvi. 

A SET has been made against clever 
women in all times. — Sketches and 
Travels in London ('On Love, Marriage, 
Men and Women'). 

WHAT is a lad in the hands of a wily 
woman of the world who makes a toy 
of you. — The Virginians, chap, xxxix. 

I CANNOT fancy a complete woman who 
has a cold heart. To be a complete 
woman, one must have a . . . good heart. 
— The Virginians, chap. xiv. 

ONLY women thoroughly know the inso- 
lence of women towards one another in 
the world. . . . They receive and deliver 
stabs smiling politely. ... If you could but 
see under the skin, you would find their little 
hearts scarred all over with little lancet digs. 
— Philip, chap. iv. 

IS there always, then, one thing which 
women do not tell to one another, and 
about which they agree to deceive each 
other ? Does the concealment arise from de- 
ceit or modesty? A man as soon as he feels 
an inclination for one of the other sex, seeks 



i82 WOMEN 

for a friend of his own to whom he may im- 
part the delightful intelligence. A woman 
(with more or less skill), buries her secret 
away from her kind. — The Virginians, 
chap. xvii. 

YOU cannot think what meannesses 
women in the world will commit . . . 
in the pursuit of a person of great rank. — The 
Newcomes, chap. lix. 

I SEE in such women — the good and pure, 
the patient and faithful, the tried and 
meek — the followers of Him whose earthly 
life was divinely sad and tender. — The New- 
comes, chap. Ixxvi. 

FOR what ... is woman made, but that 
we should fall in love with her ? I do not 
mean to say that you are to lose your sleep, 
or give up your dinner, or make yourself 
unhappy, in her absence, but when the sun 
shines, ... I like to bask in it: when the 
bird sings, to listen; and to admire that which 
is admirable with an honest and hearty enjoy- 
ment. — Sketches and Travels in London. 

AH, woman, woman! ah, wedded wife! 
ah, fond mother of fair daughters! 
How strange thy passion is to add to thy 
titles that of mother-in-law. — Lovel tlie Wid- 
ower, chap. ii. 



WOMEN 183 

THE cunning artifice of woman is such 
that, I think in the long run, no man, 
were he Macchiavel himself, could escape 
from it. — Barry Lyndon, chap. xix. 

OH, the woes that have been worked by 
women in this world! the misery into 
which men have lightly stepped with smiling 
faces, often . . . but from mere foppery, van- 
ity, and bravado ! Men play with these dread- 
ful two-edged tools, as if no harm could come 
to them. I, who have seen more of life than 
most men, if I had a son, would go on my 
knees to him and beg him to avoid woman, 
who is worse than poison. — Barry Lyndon, 
chap. xi. 

AS a great Bard of old Time has expressed 
it, what do we not owe to women ? . . . 
More love, more happiness, more calm of 
vexed spirit, more truthful aid, and pleasant 
counsel, more joy, more delicate sympathy, 
in sorrow more kind companionship. — Char- 
acter Sketches (' The Fashionable Author- 
ess'). 

WOMEN ... are born timid and ty- 
rants, and maltreat those who are 
humblest before them. — Vanity Fair, chap. 1. 

AS often will be the case, that imperious 
woman pushed her advantages too far. 
— Vanity Fair, chap. xxv. 



i84 THE WORLD 

ALMOST all the men who came near her 
loved her. . . . Wherever she went, she 
touched and charmed every one of the male 
sex, as invariably as she awakened the scorn 
and incredulity of her own sisterhood. — 
Vanity Fair, chap, xxxviii. 

ALL good women are sentimental. The 
idea of young lovers, of match-making, 
of amiable poverty, tenderly excites them. — 
Philip, chap. xxx. 

THE WORLD 

DON'T tell me about the world; I know 
it. People sacrifice the next world to it 
and are all the while proud of their prudence. 
— Philip, chap. xix. 

AND so the world is made. The strong 
and eager covet honour and enjoyment 
for themselves; the gentle and disappointed 
(once they may have been strong and eager, 
too), desire these gifts for their children. — 
The Newcomes, chap. li. 

HOW lonely we are in the world! how 
selfish and secret everybody. — Penden- 
nis, chap. xvi. 

OH! the whole world throbs with vain 
heart-pangs, and tosses and heaves with 
longing and unfulfilled desires. — Lovel the 
Widower, chap. iv. 



THE WORLD 185 

WHEN our pride, our avarice, our in- 
terest, our desire to domineer are 
worked upon, are we not forever pestering 
heaven to decide in their favour? . . . We 
appeal, we imprecate, we go down on our 
knees, we demand blessings, we shriek out for 
sentence, according to law; the great course of 
the great world moves on; we part, and strive, 
and struggle; we hate, we rage; we weep 
passionate tears; we reconcile; we race and 
win; we race and lose; we pass away, and 
other little strugglers succeed; our days are 
spent; our night comes, and another morn- 
ing rises, which shines on us no more. — The 
Virginians, chap. Ixxviii. 

WE view the world with our own eyes, 
each of us; and we make from within 
us the world we see. — English Humourists 
('Swift'). 

HOW long had our race existed ere murder 
and violence began ? and how old was 
the world ere brother slew brother ? — Philip, 
chap. xxvi. 

OH, the world is a nice, charitable world 1 
Ah, what an opportunity is there here 
to moralize! If the esteemed reader and his 
humble servant could but know — could but 
write down in a book — could but publish 
with illustrations a collection of the lies 



i86 THE WORLD 

which have been told regarding each of us 
since we came to man's estate — what a har- 
rowing and thrilling work of fiction that ro- 
mance would be! not only is the world in- 
formed of everything about you, but a great 
deal more. — The Virginians, chap. Iv. 

ARE not Heathen Idols enshrined among 
us still? Does not the world worship 
them, and persecute those who refuse to 
kneel ? Do not many timid souls sacrifice to 
them; and other bolder spirits rebel? — The 
Newcomes, chap. liii. 

THE world deals good-naturedly with 
good-natured people, and I never knew 
a sulky misanthrope who quarrelled with it, 
but it was he, and not it, that was in the 
wrong. — Esmond, chap, x, bk. i. 

SOME folks say the world is heartless: he 
who says so either prates commonplaces 
or is heartless himself, or is most singular 
and unfortunate in having made no friends. 
Many such a reasonable mortal cannot have. 
How many persons would you have to de- 
plore your death; or whose death would you 
wish to deplore? Could our hearts let in 
such a harem of dear friendships, the mere 
changes and recurrences of grief would be 
intolerable, and tax our lives beyond their 
value. In a word, we carry our own burden in 



THE WORLD 187 

the world; push and struggle along on our 
own affairs; are pinched by our own shoes 
— though, heaven forbid, we should not stop 
and forget ourselves sometimes when a 
friend cries out in his distress, or we can help 
a poor, stricken wanderer on his way. — The 
Newcomes, chap. Ixxiv. 

THE great world, the great aggregate ex- 
perience, has its good sense, as it has its 
good-humour. It detects a pretender, as it 
trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in the main: 
how should it be otherwise than kind, when 
it 4s so wise and clear-headed. — English 
Humourists ('Sterne and Goldsmith'). 

WE may be pretty certain that persons 
whom all the world treats ill deserve 
entirely the treatment they get. The world 
is a looking-glass, and gives back to every 
man the reflection of his own face. Frown 
at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you, 
laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind 
companion. — Vanity Fair, chap. ii. 

WHO says the world is all cold ? There 
is the sun and the shadows. And the 
heaven which ordains poverty and sickness 
sends pity, and love and succour. — Philip, 
chap. xli. 



i88 THE WORLD 

NO nuns, no monks, no f akeers, take whip- 
pings more kindly than some devotees 
of the world; and, as the punishment is one 
for edification, let us hope the world lays 
smartly on to back and shoulders, and uses 
the thong well. — Philip, chap. iv. 

IF you succeed in keeping a fine house on 
a small income, in showing a cheerful face 
to the world, though oppressed with ever so 
much care ... in submitting to defeats pa- 
tiently, to humiliations with smiles, so as to 
hold your own in your darling monde, you 
may succeed, but you must give up being 
frank and cordial. — Philip, chap. iv. 

MY dear sir, when you have well studied 
the world, how supremely great the 
meanest thing in this world is, and how in- 
finitely mean the greatest — I am mistaken if 
you do not make a strange and proper jumble 
of the sublime and the ridiculous, the lofty 
and the low. I have looked at the world for 
my part, and come to the conclusion that 
I know not which is which. — Catherine, 
chap. xi. 

THE jays in peacock's feathers are the 
Snobs of this world, and never since the 
days of ^Esop, were they more numerous in 
any land than they are at present in this free 
country. The imitation of the great is uni- 



YOUTH 189 

versal. . . . You entertain each other to the 
ruin of friendship . . . and destruction of 
hospitahty and good fellowship, you who but 
for the peacock's tail might chatter away so 
much at your ease, and be so jovial and 
happy. — Book of Snobs, chap. xx. 

YOUTH 

A YOUNG man begins the world with 
some aspirations at least; he will try to 
be good and follow the truth; he will strive 
to win honours for himself, and never do a 
base action; he will pass nights over his 
books, and forego ease and pleasure so that 
he may achieve a name. Many a poor 
wretch who is worn out now and old, and 
bankrupt of fame and money, too, has com- 
menced life, at any rate, with noble views and 
generous schemes from which weakness, 
idleness, or overpowering hostile fortune has 
turned him away. But a girl of the world, 
ban Dieiil the doctrine with which she be- 
gins is that she is to have a wealthy husband : 
the article of Faith in her catechism is 'I 
believe in elder sons, and a house in town, 
and a house in the country.' They are mer- 
cenary as they step fresh and blooming into 
the world out of the nursery. They have 
been schooled there to keep their bright eyes 
to look only on the Prince and the Duke, 
Croesus and Dives. By long cramping and 



iQO YOUTH 

careful process, their little natural hearts 
have been squeezed up, like the feet of their 
fashionable little sisters in China. — The 
Newcomes, chap. xlv. 

ONLY to two or three persons in all the 
world are the reminiscences of a man's 
early youth interesting — to the parent who 
nursed him, to the fond wife or child after- 
ward who loves him — to himself always and 
supremely whatever may be his actual pros- 
perity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, 
difl&culties, renown, or disappointments, the 
dawn of his life still shines brightly for him; 
the early griefs and delights and attachments 
remain with him ever and faithful and dear, 
— The Newcomes, chap. iv. 

ARE these details insipid? Look back, 
good friend, at your own youth and 
ask how was that ? I like to think of a well- 
natured boy, brave and gentle, warm-hearted 
and loving, and looking the world in the face 
with kind, honest eyes. What bright colours 
it wore then, and how you enjoyed it! A man 
has not many years of such time. He does 
not know them whilst they are with him. It 
is only when they are passed along that he 
remembers how dear and happy they were. 
— Pendennis, chap. iii. 



YOUTH 



191 



HAVE you ever tried the sarcastic or So- 
cratic method with a child? Little 
simple he or she, in the innocence of the sim- 
ple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes 
some absurd remark, which you turn to ridi- 
cule. The little creature dimly perceives that 
you are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, 
grows uneasy, bursts into tears — upon my 
word, it is not fair to try the weapon of ridi- 
cule upon that innocent young victim. . . . 
Point out his fault and lay bare the dire conse- 
quences thereof; expose it roundly and give 
him a proper, solemn, moral whipping — but do 
not attempt to castigare ridendo. Do not laugh 
at him writhing, and cause all the other boys 
in the school to laugh. Remember your own 
young days at school my friend — the tingling 
cheeks, burning ears, bursting heart, and pas- 
sion of desperate tears, with which you looked 
up, after having performed some blunder, 
whilst . . . held up to public scorn before the 
class. . . . Better the block itself . . . than 
the maddening torture of those jokes. — 
Roundabout Papers (* Thorns in the Cushion '). 

SHE had left school, and the impressions of 
six years are not got over in that space of 
time. Nay, with some persons those awes and 
terrors of youth last forever and ever. I know, 
for instance, an old gentleman who said to 
me one morning with a very agitated counte- 
nance, * I dreamed last night I was flogged by 



192 YOUTH 

Dr. Raine.' Fancy had carried him back five 
and fifty years and his rod was just as awful as 
it had been at thirteen. — Vanity Fair, chap. ii. 

EVEN all pleasure is pleasant at twenty. 
We go out to meet it with alacrity, spec- 
ulate upon its coming, and when its visit is an- 
nounced, count the days until it and we shall 
come together. How very gently and coolly 
we regard it toward the close of Life's long 
season. — The Virginians, chap. xxix. 

WE are young but once. When we re- 
member that time of youth, we are 
still young. He over whose head eight or 
nine lustres have passed, if he wishes to 
write of boys, must recall the time when he 
himself was a boy. Their habits change; 
their waists are longer or shorter; their shirt 
collars stick up more or less, but the boy is the 
boy in King George's time as in that of his 
royal niece. . . . And young fellows are hon- 
est, and merry, and idle, and mischievous, and 
timid, and brave, and studious, and selfish, 
and generous, and mean, and false, and 
truth-telling, and affectionate, and good, and 
bad, now as in former days. — Philip, chap. ii. 

TO be nineteen years of age with high 
health, high spirits, and a full purse, to 
be making your first journey. O happy 
youth! Almost it makes one young to think 
of him! — The Virginians, chap. i. 



YOUTH 



193 



TT is not pleasant to hear misanthropy from 
-■- young lips and to find eyes that are scarce 
twenty years old already looking out with 
distrust on the world. — Philip, chap. v. 



o 



UR recollections of youth are always 
young. — The Newcomes, chap, xlvii. 



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